We cannot live long or well without hope. Hope lingers on between our breathing in and breathing out. While there is breath in the body, there is always be some residue of hope in the soul. And being one of the most important gifts of the Spirit, we can always ask for greater hope. Hope expressed to another, if received and accepted, is like sharing the same oxygenated atmosphere. Where there is shared hope, there is unbroken relationship.
A little bit of hope goes a long way. Actually a little bit of hope may be better and easier to manage than a lot of hope, for with the latter comes higher expectations, which may not be easily met. The greater the hope, the greater is its potential dashing.
But hope we do, hope we must. It comes with being human. Alexander Pope was right: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” Hope is as essential to the soul as oxygen is to the body. If you lose all hope, your soul would go under as surely as your body would expire bereft of oxygen. Yet you need not lose either hope or oxygen. All you have to do is breathe, and the atmosphere around you will supply the oxygen. Just so, all you have to do is to risk believing in life’s goodness, and you can begin breathing in pure hope in some unexpected, unseen and undefined good fortune around the next bend or so in the road. You will discover the shrouded spirit surrounding your soul mysteriously supplying you some of hope’s sustaining power.
Hope is as breath to the soul. It instantly comforts and rejuvenates your inner being, so you can somehow go on when only a minute ago you were wondering how you could do just that. I remember several years ago receiving an unexpected rejection letter from a publisher. Hope seemed to drain from my soul. Yet as I walked back from a hike to the monastery where I was leading a men’s prayer retreat, the most amazing thing happened. Without warning, a puff of the breath of the Spirit blew against my chest, instantly uplifting my soul. It immediately renewed my hope in the future success of that book, with the where and when yet to be seen.
Then I recalled the words of Martin Luther, Jr., who endured one disappointment after another, all the way to his assassination in 1968. He said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” For many, that signifies placing their hope in God alone; and for many others, it means putting their hope in the arrival of some yet to be determined good news – while continuing to hope in the meantime, without latching on to this or that specific hope. You do not have to have a specific hope or set of hopes in order to live with hope; you can just hold on to hope, and let hope hold on to you. You do have that power.
Strange as it may sound, sometimes you simply have to risk believing in hope itself. It is not as difficult as you might think to do this. Just take to heart what John Lennon reportedly said: “Everything ends well. If things are not well, it’s not the end.” Now that is a word of hope, maybe even of an indestructible hope, a sure anchor for the soul. Go ahead, take a “leap of hope!”
Leave a Reply