Butterfly

When you hope for something, even for a long time, there are mornings when you wake up thinking, “This might be the day!”  With that, you capture a butterfly of hope. 

As the hours go by, you feel it fluttering sometimes to leave the bounds of your open fist.  Other times you gaze at it: wondrous and beautiful. 

The twilight slips past; you know you have to let go.  The hope has not been fulfilled this day.  Your fingers slowly uncurl from the beautiful thing you’ve been holding all day, enjoying and sort of trembling for.  You watch as it lifts off and flies away.  And you grieve. 

On harder evenings, you throw your fist open and toss the hope from you with bitterness.  You grieve. 

Every night of hoping is a grieving, a letting go and acknowledging a sort of irrecoverable loss.  Most of the time it is not too heavy a weight, this mourning, but it is there, costly, daily. 

There will be another butterfly tomorrow, and the choice to take hold of it or not.

"Listen to my voice in the morning, LORD. 

Each morning I bring my requests to you 

and wait expectantly." 

~ Psalm 5:3

(I found this art after I wrote this, and it seems to fit so perfectly.)

Beyond the Blue

So lift your voice just one more time

If there’s any hope may it be a sign

That everything was made to shine

Despite what you can see.

~ Josh Garrels, "Beyond the Blue"

Hopes All Things

“Love hopes all things.” 

What if this love doesn’t hope to get all things from the loved,

but what if it hopes for the loved:

for them to receive God’s love

just as we, the lovers,

have felt God’s love.

We hope in this love

from God, upon us. 

And it is love,

to feel no difference between ourselves

and the ones we’re loving,

to be quickened at the thought of another’s good,

and grieved at the sight of their suffering, making it our own,

to have as much expectation that God’s love will keep on working

in others as in us.  

A Breath of a Prayer

"This prayer is rooted in reality.  

'Give us bread for today,' it asks.  

But in the same breath, 

it takes us to the extremes of 'Your kingdom come.'  

In doing so, Jesus brings together 

the nearness of present need and the distant hope of God breaking fully into the present, 

because the truth is that they are only separated 

by a momentary breath."

~ Michael Card, "Luke: The Gospel of Amazement"  

Dance in the Darkness

Now that I have learned how much I need him, 

I have learned to watch for him.

~ Sarah Bessey

Look to God

I don't really hope for God.  I have God.  He's right here with me in my waiting and expectation.  I know Him, His character and love for me.  That is the source of my hope.

A lot of the things I hope for, and encourage my friends to hope for, are things that seem unlikely.  Either they've been long-awaited and the hope grows weary.  Or the circumstances just appear so impossible, so against the hope.

In moments like that it is so tempting to give up hope.  Just quit the emotional exhaustion.  Agree with the way life is and resign yourself to it.

But the way I've found to renew hope is to look not at what I so yearningly desire to change, but to look to God.  I remember what He has done for me, how He has led me.  I remember Jesus dying on the cross, showing love in an undeniable way.  I remember His resurrection, defeating death.  I remember His promises.

And then, even if I can't put my heart into hope for a while, I can rest in the God who gives hope and fulfills hope, and that's enough.