Little Things

So often now my hope is for big things: that God will sanctify His Church, bring revival, grant repentance to Christians so caught in mires of sin and discouragement, set in motion and preserve life-long love stories, for people desperately ill to be healed.  But I find myself overlooking hope for little things.  Can I hope that God will give me wisdom to see how to act in difficult relationships?  Is there hope that a friend who spoke critically will be edifying the next time we speak?  Do I hope for my sniffles not to turn into a cold?  Can I encourage my friends to hope that their children won't be so disobedient today?

Touch of Wonder by John Blase

"Contentment that cancels out hope is merely a mask for resignation."
~ John Blase, Touch of Wonder

"Hope, the Greatest Indeterminacy of All"

Tonight I watched an episode of Joan of Arcadia, a now-cancelled CBS television series.  In it, God shows up and tells Joan to plant a garden on her high school's property as a physics project. But all her usual study-friends desert her. The flunkies throw their contraband cigarette butts and empty slushy cups onto it. Joan feels like it's all a failure and she has no idea what's going on. But people notice the momentum of the project and start helping. Eventually there's a garden gnome made out of garbage, mums to attract pollinating bees, and Judith - who's been struggling with feeling isolated - joins in at the last minute, planting flower bulbs deep in the soil. They read their assignment's premise aloud to their class, "We offer our garden as an inquiry into the nature of hope, the greatest indeterminacy of all." As tends to be the case with a commitment to hope, just as the class is meditating on that poetic line, a bulldozer shows up to destroy the garden. But Judith stands to her feet in front of it, until the class rallies behind her cheering her name, and she's carried out of the way of the machinery. Then God tells Joan 1) that the crocuses and tulips her friend was planting will sprout and bloom in the spring even though the ground got bulldozed, and Judith knew that; and 2) that even though the garden was destroyed, what Joan planted and tended by being involved in "the process", grew. The scene cuts to a picture of Judith smiling.