Hope: we all need it.
Sustenance for the heart, hope beats through our veins, erasing the limits and downfalls of the past and sketching in fresh rough drafts of potential for today.
A warm morning air that fills our lungs with the vibrancy of all things new, forgiven now of God and ourselves, we no longer cloud that forgiveness through an obsessive focus on the lack of forgiveness from another person or persons.
Instead, we deeply inhale and gratefully take in that the forgiveness from two out of three isn’t bad; in fact, it’s the greater of the three to be forgiven by God and ourselves (how can we accept forgiveness from others even if it does come if we haven't received the other two first? It would be like putting water into a pail with holes).
With great humility we soberly understand that the reality of life is that those two forgivenesses are the only ones in our power to seek, find and redeem. Though we seek forgiveness from others, it may never, and often more than likely, never come.
And so in hope, we live the truth that we have been and are and always will be forgiven by God, thus enabled to always forgive ourselves too.
In that hope, we are the most gentle and fascinated of beings, with the utmost compassion for the individuals who hold unforgiveness towards us—a wretched state of being we know all too well because we too have been unforgiving, and we know its misery fed by its source and motivation—pride built upon years of storing up wrongs and insecurities based on what the world (not God) thinks of us.
We know how much that hurts, and how it makes us lash out at others in defensiveness and animosity, holding people forever accountable.
In that state of being lies a total lack of hope—in God and ourselves.
Hope then, is hope in God which permeates deep down into our soul, nurturing hope in ourselves for ourselves, which emanates outward in an objective, practical outlook and manner which doesn’t resort to the false hope of illogical and often self-centered, wishful thinking.
It is a hope that is not expectant when it comes to other people, but peaceful and clear-eyed, not pie in the sky.
Hope is a serious matter of knowing from Who it derives and how, and forgoing the often inadequate lofty platitudes (most of which people neither truly adhere to or admire in others) or the vindictive "should's" of the world and opting instead to thrive in the strength of a quiet and confident meekness.
Hope is not about putting faith in the impossible, as in hoping for people to change.
Hope is putting faith in the realistically possible: as in hoping for ourself to change in the power and presence of God, Jesus and His Spirit, through whom all blessings have always and only truly flowed.
Copyright Barb Harwood
