A TIME FOR EVERYTHING

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. ~Proverbs 13:12

 Sometimes I wish I did not believe in miracles. I wish I had never seen any, lived any, built altars and given thanks for any. When the impossible is possible – when even three days stone cold dead doesn’t mean the end – it makes it very hard to know when to relinquish hope.

The thing about hope is that you have to know when to cling to it, and when to lose it – when to accept the death, and when to wait for the resurrection.

Most of what I feel about life lately falls into the category of hope deferred, which might help to explain my chronic case of heart sick. I hear a lot of Divine, Maybe, but not right now. How badly do you want it, really? I don’t mind waiting – I’ve never been big on instant gratification. Dr. Seuss was right – we do a lot of waiting in our lifetimes, and a person has to learn to occupy oneself. I’ve learned to stand patiently in line, flip through magazines in waiting rooms, and wait expectantly for Spring. For some things I even enjoy the anticipation, like waiting all week to watch Saturday morning cartoons – a rich experience that my children will never know.

Waiting for something is not the same as hope deferred. Waiting implies that whatever it is that you are waiting for will in fact come – maybe not right when you want it, but eventually. Time is all that is required – and patience, if you don’t want to behave like an infant while you are waiting.

Hope is an investment – there is something of significance to be gained or lost that is sitting in a balance over which you have limited control. Faith or no faith, there is the real possibility that you might not ever experience it. You might never accomplish it. You might never obtain it. You might obtain it, and it might be the catalyst for the worst thing that ever happened to you. You just don’t know. That thing you are hoping for might ask everything of you, taking everything that is not nailed down in exchange for the privilege of the journey, and in the end remain a shadow.

Hope is not a solid rock – it is not a foundation. Hope comes with a lot of up and down, slip-sliding and flip-flopping. It takes great courage to hope – to continue hoping through the tightening knots in your belly, and the skin sweats, and the icy fingers that stammer through their chores. It takes great conviction to keep hope alive when every voice and every circumstance around you says it’s hopeless.

You cannot hope half-heartedly.

Hope is an all-in endeavor.

Question: How do you know when it is time to give it up?

Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. ~G.K.Chesterton