Hope ... Or Something Like It

Heresy, Vengeance, and a Divine Smile

“Listen to my words, LORD, consider my lament.”

~ Psalms 5:1 ~

I’ve never had writer’s block. I always seem to have something to say.

I’m not sure if that’s arrogant or admission of a condition. But a blank page never appears menacing to me. It screams adventure. In some ways, the blank slate seems like a metaphor for hope.

Hope is odd. Naively stubborn. Seemingly ignorant of impossibility. Its power is unrelenting, intoxicating, mature in its endurance, yet magical in its ability to transform the weathered elder with child-like wonder.

Half Hercules; half Benjamin Button.

Or something to that effect.

Like a child, hope reacts with actions and emotions unfit for despair or the despondent. Hope disrupts the aged with youthful enthusiasm more fit for a child’s birthday than an adult tried and tested by the worries and wrestlings of time.

Hope is mystical. Eyes and ears trained on what’s beyond the veil, hope transmits divine chatter whispering routes incomprehensible to common sense. Hope woos us, calls us, invites us to witness what cannot be seen. However brief. However fantastic.

Hope is absurd. It transforms tragedy into triumph, death into an opportunity. In barren soil, hope transforms aridity into Eden. Beyond reason or chance or doubt. Hope, according to Viktor Frankl, was the difference between those who survived a hell like Auschwitz and those who succumbed to the specter of despair. For hope dissolves prison walls—whether actual or of our own making.