Hope is the thing with feathers. . .

Do not be weary. Hope is here and asks nothing of us. These are not tiring times so much as tiresome. The world, the flesh, and the devils have nothing new to say, but now they say the same stuff with even more amplification. Yet complaining is even more tiresome.

Hope sings in the storm, the tune without words. This time is not worse than other times, in some ways better, and the storm is not so fierce that hope stops singing. Hope is not fantasizing: no leap into unreality. Instead, hope is the beginning of faith, a small idea that might be and grows more substantial with time.

This is intellect without intellectualism. Hope makes us think, but hopeful thinking urges us to more. We want love: earthiness without dirtiness. The City of God that we hope is our new home will be green and civilized. We hope.

The gift of hope asks nothing of us, God’s free creation in our hearts. When we were expelled from Eden, when the last night in the nursery came and we went wandering without wonder, then hope was implanted in our hearts. The evils of our age can be endured and even overcome, we hope. We know we have found a place of hope when getting is less important than giving. 

Hope gives and needs nothing, because hope is built on reality and the storm is local. The stars are behind the storm and shine on. Starlight never ends and is free. As humans, hope is our heritage, because we hope to see the stars. Hope is the beginning of love, because hope dares to believe that someone might love us without demanding something of us.

God is super abundant love without any needs and so we can have hope. We are needy, but God is not. There is hope in His security, his not-neediness. Hope is in our hearts: the free gift of God.

Heraclitus and Disney’s Pocahontas said: “You can never step in the same river twice.” The world changes and there feels like there is no rest, no security. The old philosopher, if not the cartoon character, knew there was or might be a divine word, something good, under all the restless, warring change. The storm rages, but there is hope in the Word, unchanging, unmoved, charitable. The banks of the river do not change and we can sit there and picnic in the jollification of God.

Yesterday a best of friends reminded me of a poem I must have read, but had forgotten by that adventurer and explorer of the soul Emily Dickinson:

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

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Thanks to the Gremillions!