Do you have hope planted in the bottom of your soul?

Today at A Holy Experience Ann Voskamp tells us about planting bulbs with two of her children.

“I’m going to drop mine in now.” The boy’s holding his bulb poised, looking my way for assurance.

“No!” Little One wails. “Don’t put the flower so far down in the dark!” She tries to wrest the bulb from his hand. I scoop her angst all up close.

“But it has to go down in,” I brush the hair out of her eyes, kiss tip of that pug nose. Because sometimes, Child — hope’s waiting is dark.

She turns her face up towards mine and our cheeks brush.

“Will we have to dig them up to get the flowers after the snow?” I squeeze her tight.

“No, Girl. When He’s ready — all that beauty will come up through the black earth as if by themselves.”

We kneel down, drop a bulb into opening earth, then wait “for the forces above and below and beyond our control to work upon” all these things. The boy pats the earth down and over and the Girl, she watches.

We bury hope in a tomb of its own.

Like the faith diggers do every day. We bury our swollen prayers in Him who’s raised from the tomb.

We lay our hope, full and tender, into the depths of Him and wait in hope for God to resurrect something good.

Good always necessitates long waiting.

Every tulip only blossoms after cold months of winter wait. Every human ever unfurled into existence through nine long months of the womb waiting. And the only kingdom that will last for eternity still waits, this millennia-long, unwavering-hope for return of its King. Instead of chafing, we accept that waiting is a strand in the DNA of the Body of Christ.

That this waiting on God is the very real work of the people of God.

Every person needs hope planted at the bottom of their hole.

Because that is the thing:

Hope is what holds a breaking heart together.

Hope in a Big God is what frees from big fears.

Hope is a thing with keys…..

...because there’s an old and steadying wisdom cupped in the curve of just those two words, ‘Hope and Wait.”

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