Hope lingers on

"Hope lingers on in our darkest hour. I will not hate. I will not fear. In our darkest hour, hope lingers here."



Thanks to Bird Dog

No more hope.

Satirical blog Manhattan Infidel imagines an exclusive interview with Michelle Obama here.

"...welcome in Hope. And He has a name."

At A Holy Expeerience Ann Voskamp reminds us that

We all need to believe that things can change.

“And then sometimes — the impossible unfolds into the possible.”

...Tears are never a sign of weakness. Tears are always the sign of an open heart.

...No matter how we’re hurting — it’s only when we lose hope that the real horror happens.

...and there’s Christ who comes to give us the gift every one wants more than anything — a future and a hope.

...The very least you can do with your life is welcome in Hope. And He has a name.

And the very best you can do with your life is build a life with Hope.

And the very best you can do with your life is build a life with Hope.

Read more and view photos here.

Turning on a dime

Neo-Neocon writes,

I know that this is the traditional honeymoon period for a president-elect. But whatever honeymoon aspects this has—and it most definitely has some—are further enhanced by the fact that this was a honeymoon that was unexpected and unplanned by most people. It’s as though we expected to spend some time in the hospital having a colonoscopy, and after doing all the nasty prep and getting to the point of lying in the hospital room with the IV about to be inserted, instead a brass band came into the room and the drum majorette announces that we need to get up, because instead we’ve won a free trip to a luxury resort in Hawaii.

Now, that resort might be a bit tawdry. It may not be the exactly perfect hotel we would have chosen it we’d had our druthers. But hey, it’s a whole lot better than that colonoscopy.

It may be a silly dream, and it may soon be time to wake up. But the relief and tentatively burgeoning hope so many people are willing and eager to experience underscores what stress both sides have been under, perhaps without fully realizing it, not just for the Obama years but for the Bush years as well. Maybe, just maybe, this improbable, unusual, weirdly-coiffed and spray-tanned reality show president is here to tell us to lay down that weary load, if only for a moment, and enjoy a feeling of national wonderment that we’ve arrived at such an odd place, and to hope that America’s good luck might just be holding out after all when most of us least expected it.

[NOTE: I don’t know exactly where the following item goes, so I may as well put it here. I was watching Fox News last night, and I saw a clip of a recent interview with Trump (I think it came from a forthcoming “60 Minutes,” but I’m not sure). Trump was being asked about the phone call he got from Hillary when she conceded, and he said something that seemed astute, telling, respectful, and even perhaps (dare I say it?) empathetic. He said the call was very hard for Hillary to make—“harder for her than it would have been for me, and it would have been very hard for me,” and then went on to say a few nice things about her.

The guy can turn on a dime, from Hillary-love to Hillary-hate to Hillary-understanding. But of course, we already knew that. But right now I’ll take it, because showing a little graciousness to the other side now that he’s finally won can only help us all in the end.]

Read more here.

If you have grown up with Obama as your president are you fabulously secure and optimistic?

Ann Althouse looks at that question today.

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.”

Read more here.

Celebrating the founding of this country

Brent Cochran writes at Ace of Spades,

What does Independence Day stand for? What is it a celebration of? It is NOT a celebration of the country as it exists. It is a celebration of the founding of this country. It is an exultation of the ideals of liberty and an act of veneration toward the men who gave tyranny the middle finger.

Those men risked, quite literally, everything. And they did it for an idea. For a hope. On faith. What they fought for had never been done before. When Patrick Henry declared “Give me liberty or give me death!” no one knew quite what liberty would look like. But they were determined to give it a try. They believed in the ideals of freedom. When our Founding Fathers declared “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” they did so not with heavy hearts and trepidation, but with boldness and, dare I say, joy. They were throwing off the yoke of oppression and grabbing their opportunity for a free life.

And by God they won. They succeeded. They were victorious.

Yes, they are likely distraught at what exists. There is much to bemoan, to rail against, to fear even. But not today.

Today, me and mine celebrate. We will eat, we will drink, we will colorfully blow some shit up. We will do so because brave men and women believed in freedom and liberty enough to dare all. They had far less than us, but still they had hope. Still they had faith. No one had shown them what liberty looked like, yet still they fought for it. I honor their memory today with that same hope, with that same faith. We have seen liberty, we have tasted freedom. We have done so because of those men and women and I will honor them and their memory and their sacrifice not in moroseness or anger, but in celebration and hope for the future.

Read more here.

What road are you on?

Ann Voskamp notes that

Sometimes people are so quiet and brave, we forget that they are suffering.

...Because sometimes the road you’re on is more important than the bus waiting out on the road that someone else says you have to take.

...Every child is a message that everything is possible again; your past, your story, this world, it all has another chance.

...Time likes to lie and say dreams have become impossible things.

...There comes a place when your world will go all quiet and the only thing that will be left is the last beat of your own heart.

Be still often enough you learn its beating song before its forever gone.

There are only so many bluing spring skies to inhale.

... If you haven’t ever really decided where you’re going, any road will get you there — it’s only when you know where you want to go, that there’s only One Way.

...Sometimes you get so used to something, you forget that anything is possible.

...Who believes in unseen things, in impossible things, in the things you can’t measure and control and deduce and reduce and wrap up in a reasonably neat and timely package and who in this cynical world remembers how to find Hope?

...“We believe that the unseen hand may be at times assuredly felt by gracious souls.” [Spurgeon]

...Time may have hands on the clock but its arms are too weak to rob anybody of hope, steal anybody’s prayers, destroy anybody’s joy.
So what if Time’s got hands on a clock — it’s God who has His Hands on the universe. Every little thing is going to be okay because God is working good through every little thing.

All that’s happening is just happening to make miracles. There are miracles always unfolding under the impossibles.

Circumstances can go ahead and run out of time — but the courageous refuse to run out of hope.

We can always hope because there is always joy traveling to us down the unexpected roads.

And because the thing is: Hope always has a cost and hope is always worth it, because who wants the cheap and deadened alternative?

Hope fuels the soul to impossible places.

...And when we step outside behind my brother and his bride, you can see the storm moving across the fields, down the road —

and there it is, the two of them standing under it, all of us standing under it:

a complete double rainbow arching like a sign of His promise round everything.

Hope

Thanks to Ann Voskamp

Never stop hoping

Ann Voskamp writes today about joy and hope:

Time can’t dictate dreams or hijack hope or determine destination.

Time may have hands on the clock but it’s arms are too weak to rob anybody of hope, steal anybody’s prayers, destroy anybody’s joy.

And So what if time’s got hands on a clock — it’s God who has His Hands on the universe. Every little thing is going to be okay because God is working good through every little thing.

All that’s happening is just happening to make miracles. There are miracles always unfolding under the impossibles.

“Joys are always on their way to us,” writes Amy Carmichael. “They are always traveling to us through the darkness of the night. There is never a night when they are not coming.”

Because there is never a night where joys are not coming to us, there is never a road that can’t arrive at Hope. Circumstances can go ahead and run out of time — but the courageous refuse to run out of hope.

We can always hope because there is always joy traveling to us down the unexpected roads.

Please read more here.

Doing good

NBA teams, like NFL and NHL teams, can be a source of immense good in their communities. The Memphis Grizzleys surely are. Charics Brewer is an 8-year-old with multiple sclerosis. He is a big fan of the Grizzleys. Recently he and his mother were invited to lunch. The owner of the Grizzleys barged into the restaurant to announce that Charvis has been drafted as a member of the Grizzleys. The coach then held a news conference announcing the deal. Charvis was given a hat, uniform shirt with his name on it, and a tour of the facilities, where he met all the players. An awesome gift! The whole thing was orchestrated by the Make A Wish foundation.

Thanks to Ann Voskamp for linking to the Today article.

Thank God for imperfections

Appropriate for today's day of rest, Ann Voskamp links to a blogger who writes,

Hope is really about rest. Resting in the imperfections of today because you believe that tomorrow there is possibility.

Here’s our land and home in all of it’s imperfect glory. If this place would have been perfect it would have been out of our price range. Thank God for imperfections, right?!

Stay open to hope

Ann Voskamp goes with a friend who is grieving. They go to a butterfly observatory. A morpho butterfly lands on Ann's shoulders, and does a rare thing. It opens its brown wings and shows the gorgeous blue underneath the brown. And it stays open. "So you never close again."

Go read the story here.

Week one: Hope

Ann Voskamp wants us to have an upside-down Christmas this year. To encounter Jesus in a fresh way. Advent: coming...waiting. We are the people living after Christ's resurrection: the hallelujah people, always anticipating the coming of Christ again.

Week one: the Hope candle. We reach out to that one tree; the tree on which He hung, and we hold onto Him. But who knew that the limbs of the tree, that love, were reaching for us!

He doesn't write answers for us in the stars; He writes answers for us in His scars. What ultimately comforts us is not knowing His plan, but knowing His presence. Look for His presence this week in small ways, in tender shoots.

Thanks, Ann.