I heard some poems about hope today.
I don't know who wrote them and I don't have a copy, but they've left me with two surprising images of hope which resonated.
Firstly, hope is something terribly fragile, so delicate that it might be crushed if we pick it up and examine it too closely...
And secondly, a picture of hope as having the audacity to reach a hand into darkness to grab a handful of light.
It's been a difficult week, as we start a new year. Rapidly rising Covid numbers, a struggling health service, back in strict lockdown, rapidly changing guidelines for schools and back to home learning; scenes of rioting in the USA and resulting deaths... for starters.
If our hope is in the things of the world, and to be fair we're all human and inevitably some of it is, then we're probably struggling a bit, one way or another at the moment, looking out for some hope.
We know our hope is in God and that He is faithful, the same whatever our circumstances and walking with us in each moment. But in a week like this one, hope can feel so very fragile. Fragile hope is still hope, though - and even if it is crushed, it is renewed in God, re-created by Him and in Him.
And so to that second image - of having the audacity to reach out into all that is chaotic and dark, and grab what is light. It does take strength and courage to keep on doing that, but we can be sure that 'the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. (John 1:5.)'
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