hope.

hope is hard.

when the job isn't offered. when the baby doesn't come. when the date doesn't call back.

hope is hard.

i keenly remember my single years. hoping, longing, yearning for a husband. i lived those single years in a state of perpetual hope. and in reflection i realise what gift that was. sure it was filled with disappointments and night-cries to god. but it also echoed the place we are all in as we hope for the kingdom come. and in the midst there were some amazingly significant, incredibly joyful times. travel that opened my mind and my heart. opportunities to connect with girlfriends in real and honest ways, space to sort through all that i needed to sort through to be ready. it was not all bad.

when we hope, we live inside a promise. 

when we hope for a job, we live inside the promise that god has said he's our provision.

when we hope for a baby, we live inside the promise that god has said children are a blessing.

when we hope for a husband, we live inside the promise that god made man for relationship.

when we hope for christ, we live inside the promise that he will come again. 

barbara brown taylor writes about this promise, this hope in 'late bloomer'

It's a hard thing to believe in a promise-

to live by it, day after day,

to see it in the night sky

and hear it in your name

and see it again in your lover's eyes.

It's a hard thing to believe in a promise with

no power in it to make it come true.

Everything is in the future tense –

the land, the child, the blessing

Everything will happen, by and by,

but in the meantime, how do I live now?

And yet. What better way to live than in the grip of a

promise?

To wake in the possibility that today might be the day...

To search the face of every stranger

in case it turns out to be the angel of God.

To take nothing for granted.

Or to take everything as granted,

though not yet grasped.

To handle every moment of life

as a seed of the promise

and to plant it tenderly, never knowing if this moment,

or the next, may be the one that grows.