Hope: changes everything
If you ask me what hope is, what would I say?
That I think It’s the most precious commodity we have, and need, every day
It’s more important than anything else and it has power, beyond measure
In this way, Hope, really is, a priceless treasure
It’s what gets us up and out of bed
The belief that maybe, even in a dark place, with us angels may tread
For a Christian, hope is believing in things unseen
Trusting in things unknown, over the abyss daring to lean
The willingness to try
To fly
To live
To love
It’s faith.
Simply put:
Hope changes everything
Faith and hope go hand in hand.
Without hope we have nothing
There isn’t really a point
We drift
We dither
We dangle
Get ourselves tied up in a tangle
Sometimes hope can feel absent and missing
Like it’s slipping through our fingers against our wishing
Life batters at us and tries to steal it away
Or we reject it, push it aside and turn our backs
in favour of a narrative of bitterness and cynicism,
a story we choose to tell coloured with pain and hurt.
That keeps us dragged down in the dirt.
But, if we let it,
Hope will come back and let us rise, like maya angelou says
To be more, knock down the doubters, push aside the limits that others would apply
Hope is flammable and contagious
Hard to contain…
A little hope goes a long way
And it changes everything
Without evidence or proof, Hope lets us invest, in a knowledge
That we are loved beyond measure
There is more to this life
Than the fleeting moments of the hours in each day
That we matter
We count
We might leave a mark
That with God alongside us there will always be a light in the dark
This time last year in our capital city
Another terrorist attack,
A messed up individual with a divisive ideology, a hatred run deep
Swearing and stomping, knife blades and bombs
blood drawn, Lives lost, fear triggered.
And yet, even in this, we saw hope.
Citizens turned towards the danger to protect and defend
Using narwhale tusks grabbed from a wall
A fire extinguisher and sheer guts.
All is not lost, God is with us,
There is always, always hope. Even there, even then.
We will rise, hope will regain it’s hold and build us up.
We celebrate this day, as we watch and we wait
Hope is never all lost, and holding to it changes everything.
Chantal Noppen is Team Vicar of North Wearside, in the Diocese of Durham.
