Hope

"Until we walk with despair, and still have hope, we will not know that our hope was not just hope in ourselves, in our successes, in our power to make a difference, in our image of what perfection and wholeness should be. We need hope from a deeper Source.

Until we walk with despair, we will never uncover the Real Hope on the other side of despair. Until we allow the crash and crush of our images, we will never discover the Real Life beyond what only seems like death.

This very journey is probably the heart of what Jesus came to reveal."  (Richard Rohr)

I was digging through my backlog of thoughts, quotes and meditations I've wanted to share here at some point, and came across the above passage from Richard Rohr.

I've been thinking a lot about hope again in the last week or two.  Partly because I'm praying for some situations that seem, in the natural anyway, barring miracles, hopeless.  Partly because I've been working through some stuff from my past that came up again - stuff from a time that really did create a sense of despair.

Hope, if you know me well, is one of my favorite words.  And this week I'm thinking about it, scouring my life for it, and clinging to it with white-knuckled fingers just because it is what it is.

And it encouraged me to be reminded by this quote that hope shines brightest in despair.  That it is in despair that we discover how grounded our hope truly is.  And that Jesus is hope revealed, and worth clinging to.