Last week I wrote about hope’s painful aspects. This week I write about hope on a different note, in hopes that I am able to express its power.
Martin Luther King said “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
AMEN! Though hope hurts occasionally, hope is an eternal spring, in many senses of the word, and must never be relinquished. Like a coiled spring, hope helps us bounce back from life’s disappointments. “I have a 100% success rate of living through tough times,” Brad Wilcox quipped. The sun WILL come out tomorrow, Pain will fade, aches will heal, friendships will form, love will manifest. These are timeless truths. Hope carries us into the tomorrows where healing happens.
Just as a liquid spring brings a mountain side to life, giving sustenance to creatures from mountain sheep to rock chucks and making it possible for vibrant wildflowers to decorate the hillsides, so hope gives sustenance to dreams and makes life vibrant with anticipated possibilities. And life is vibrant with possibilities. Every day, EVERY day, happy things happen. The sun comes up. Birds sing. Flowers bloom. Children laugh. People help other people. And most days happy things happen to me. Children laugh at my jokes. Flowers bloom in my yard. People help me. And occasionally AMAZING things happen to me...a kind message from a caring bishop, an invitation to participate in a specialized professional development course, a hesitant “I love you” from a shy student…
Hope is a motivating force. Sometimes it drives me to do unpleasant things….Hope for plump raspberries compels me to spread sheep poop on the berry rows. Hope for a not-plump belly prompts me to decline a second helping of chocolate cake. (Some hopes are more grounded in reality than others…) Sometimes hope invites me to to take risks, to do things like try new recipes, sign up for a bike relay from Salt Lake to St. George, and get married (which, incidentally, was a risk that has turned out well for me…) Hoping to share light and love and hope with others, I write an almost-weekly blog.
Hope powers my life. It permeates all that I do. I hope my day will be good so I get up. I hope my students will learn so I prepare engaging activities. I hope my garden will grow so I plant seeds. I hope my children will be happy so I give advice. {Sometimes my hope-inspired actions are shaky but the hope remains solid!) Hope has me checking my texts for a kind word and my mailbox for a kind card. And it happens! Kind cards, caring texts, happy children, ripe tomatoes, science literate students, and good days come!! Not every day, Not even every week. Some days are simply bad, some students don’t learn, some seasons tomatoes don’t grow and sometimes loved ones suffer for a long time…..but not always and not forever. The sun will come out in a coming tomorrow. Where there is life, there is hope.
In fact, hope is vital to life and hopelessness can be fatal. Viktor Frankl, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, said “Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man, his courage and hope, or lack of them and the state of immunity of his body will understand that sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect”. To prove his point, Frankl referenced the high death rate in Auschwitz in 1994 between Christmas and New Years. When people who had hoped to be home by Christmas found themselves still imprisoned, they lost hope and died in record numbers.
While it is true that hope hurts, it is also true that hope brings life. An analogy to love is helpful here. Love, like hope, hurts. It hurts to love and lose. It especially hurts to lose a loved one. But pain is the price we pay to love and is worth the “utmost farthing” that it demands in payment. “Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all” is a truism. So it is with hope. It is much less painful to hope and hurt than it is to be without hope.
Earlier I related two definitions of the word spring to hope. Coiled springs represent hope’s ability to help us bounce back. Mountain springs epitomize hope’s life giving essence and its ability to infuse beauty into our existence. In conclusion I want to relate hope to a third definition of spring, that of seasonal spring. Coiled springs can lose their snap and mountain springs may run dry but seasonal springs always come. They may come in wet and cold and nasty but they always come. Spring always follows winter. Tulips bloom, robins return, and grass grows green again. Hope springs eternal.
Christ, the author of life and love, gives us hope. “Having faith on the Lord; having a hope that ye shall receive eternal life; having a love of God always in your hearts, that ye may be lifted up at the last day and enter into his rest.” (Alma 13:29) When earth’s days seem dark and literal spring brings no relief to the deeply saddened soul, there is hope in Christ. Trusting in Him, we will feel His love and can legitimately hope to enter into His rest in a coming day. The Son will come out in a coming tomorrow.
Martin Luther King said “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
AMEN! Though hope hurts occasionally, hope is an eternal spring, in many senses of the word, and must never be relinquished. Like a coiled spring, hope helps us bounce back from life’s disappointments. “I have a 100% success rate of living through tough times,” Brad Wilcox quipped. The sun WILL come out tomorrow, Pain will fade, aches will heal, friendships will form, love will manifest. These are timeless truths. Hope carries us into the tomorrows where healing happens.
Just as a liquid spring brings a mountain side to life, giving sustenance to creatures from mountain sheep to rock chucks and making it possible for vibrant wildflowers to decorate the hillsides, so hope gives sustenance to dreams and makes life vibrant with anticipated possibilities. And life is vibrant with possibilities. Every day, EVERY day, happy things happen. The sun comes up. Birds sing. Flowers bloom. Children laugh. People help other people. And most days happy things happen to me. Children laugh at my jokes. Flowers bloom in my yard. People help me. And occasionally AMAZING things happen to me...a kind message from a caring bishop, an invitation to participate in a specialized professional development course, a hesitant “I love you” from a shy student…
Hope is a motivating force. Sometimes it drives me to do unpleasant things….Hope for plump raspberries compels me to spread sheep poop on the berry rows. Hope for a not-plump belly prompts me to decline a second helping of chocolate cake. (Some hopes are more grounded in reality than others…) Sometimes hope invites me to to take risks, to do things like try new recipes, sign up for a bike relay from Salt Lake to St. George, and get married (which, incidentally, was a risk that has turned out well for me…) Hoping to share light and love and hope with others, I write an almost-weekly blog.
Hope powers my life. It permeates all that I do. I hope my day will be good so I get up. I hope my students will learn so I prepare engaging activities. I hope my garden will grow so I plant seeds. I hope my children will be happy so I give advice. {Sometimes my hope-inspired actions are shaky but the hope remains solid!) Hope has me checking my texts for a kind word and my mailbox for a kind card. And it happens! Kind cards, caring texts, happy children, ripe tomatoes, science literate students, and good days come!! Not every day, Not even every week. Some days are simply bad, some students don’t learn, some seasons tomatoes don’t grow and sometimes loved ones suffer for a long time…..but not always and not forever. The sun will come out in a coming tomorrow. Where there is life, there is hope.
In fact, hope is vital to life and hopelessness can be fatal. Viktor Frankl, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, said “Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man, his courage and hope, or lack of them and the state of immunity of his body will understand that sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect”. To prove his point, Frankl referenced the high death rate in Auschwitz in 1994 between Christmas and New Years. When people who had hoped to be home by Christmas found themselves still imprisoned, they lost hope and died in record numbers.
While it is true that hope hurts, it is also true that hope brings life. An analogy to love is helpful here. Love, like hope, hurts. It hurts to love and lose. It especially hurts to lose a loved one. But pain is the price we pay to love and is worth the “utmost farthing” that it demands in payment. “Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all” is a truism. So it is with hope. It is much less painful to hope and hurt than it is to be without hope.
Earlier I related two definitions of the word spring to hope. Coiled springs represent hope’s ability to help us bounce back. Mountain springs epitomize hope’s life giving essence and its ability to infuse beauty into our existence. In conclusion I want to relate hope to a third definition of spring, that of seasonal spring. Coiled springs can lose their snap and mountain springs may run dry but seasonal springs always come. They may come in wet and cold and nasty but they always come. Spring always follows winter. Tulips bloom, robins return, and grass grows green again. Hope springs eternal.
Christ, the author of life and love, gives us hope. “Having faith on the Lord; having a hope that ye shall receive eternal life; having a love of God always in your hearts, that ye may be lifted up at the last day and enter into his rest.” (Alma 13:29) When earth’s days seem dark and literal spring brings no relief to the deeply saddened soul, there is hope in Christ. Trusting in Him, we will feel His love and can legitimately hope to enter into His rest in a coming day. The Son will come out in a coming tomorrow.
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