Hope

I'm finding that hope is the air the soul breathes. When hope reaches an end, so does the life that it supports. It is simply that vital for going forward.

The human spirit by it's very nature has hope - woven into it's fibers and running through it's veins. It is inborn into every being, as natural as the instinct to love and to dance. But even after we grow afraid to dance and too wounded to love, still we hope - or there would be no reason to go on.

I wonder what it is we hope for, or maybe better said what we hope in. Because naturally hope looks forward - to future events or future fulfillment that may yet come to pass in our lives. But the future is unknown. We can plan and schedule - and we do - trying to guarantee ourselves of fulfillment. But for the most part, it can be said that human kind hopes in the unknown. It is our only choice.

As long as we have a hope - that things will change, that we will become filled somehow, that the future holds joy and a fullness we have not yet known - we continue forward, placing one foot faithfully in front of the other.

Yet sometimes we do loose hope in things. Sometimes we seal the fates of portions of our lives by giving up hope in that area. We give up hope in our marriages, our children or spouses. We give up hope in our jobs, friendships, abilities, dreams - anything in life that has the potential to change or improve.

I think hope is a choice. And sometimes it's a scary, fragile choice. It takes courage, strength and faith to continue hoping in something that either appears a lost cause, or something that has hurt us before. It can be devastating to hope in something - only to have it fail time and time again. Hope can become a place of vulnerable foolishness we decide to abandon. But once hope is put aside, we must mourn our loss. Hope sustains the life of dreams, relationships, etc. Once we decide to hope no longer, we must accept the death of that thing.

Maybe that is one of the reasons death is so hard to deal with - at least in part. Because after death - there is no hoping left to us.

Therein lies some of the power and beauty of Easter. We are shown that even in death, we are allowed hope. Death does not silence hope - no longer can it. It lost that ability. When we choose to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we choose hope. In every circumstance we considered hopeless, we find a hole in the walls of death that allows something to become alive again - against all odds. God shows us he is a God that does not loose hope. He is the builder, the sustainer and the holder of all and any hope we may have in our lives. He is the Unknown we hope in - whether we realize it or not. Choosing to continue to hope builds life - feeds it - fills it and can within itself produce the very fullness we hoped for.

It is strength to identify the hopes within us - and to consciously decide to keep those hopes alive. And we know also that our hope extends beyond this life into the next.

To hope is to choose life. To hope for grand things, things of goodness and truth, is to choose a full life. Hope connects us to the eternal. It goes beyond daily life, beyond the here and now and reaches for the eternal reality of heaven.