H O P E

If I was honest with you, I would pull back the curtains and reveal the dark, the dismal, the dreary, all the moments of 2020 that have weighed on my heart and mind like the mountains weigh on the valleys. My name would be forsaken amidst the visceral noise. Color would be muddled until only horror remained.
But I promised myself 2020 would be it.
This was going to be the year.
THE YEAR.
Whatever that really means.
Instead, 2020 felt more like a mix between a curse and an off-color joke.
Yet in the midst, there was hope.
That was my blessed curse, the bright shadow refused to leave, that last shimmer of sunlight before the setting that lingers for an eternity.
Beneath it all: all the weight, all the anger, the sickness, the hate, the fear, there was something stronger.
Grave could not hold it,
economic crisis could not hinder it,
racism and hate could not hide it.
Hope.
It’s a simple word, one that’s most unfortunately associated with fools, last resorts, and wishful thinking.
But what if it’s not?
What if hope is something stronger, something bigger and brighter than any other force of reality that might try and bring death into our lives?
Hope.
It’s not the potential of something better, it’s the promise.
It’s not the desire for a better future, it’s the declaration that one is coming.
It’s not the anxiety over whether better days might come, it’s the anticipation that better days are coming.
The difference is massive.
In my own heart, I can feel it.
In a song, in a ray of soft morning light, a latent silence. Moments that can turn a bad day into a beautiful one. And it’s all because of hope.
And so to you, dreading the future, feeling dismal in the present, I dare you to hope.
Know that beautiful, full days, brimming of light and joy, are coming. Years that are laden with peace and abundant in love are coming. Months so luminous with glory you won’t forget them for eternity.
To spirits downtrodden and desperate, I call to you, arise. Now is not the time to slumber nor to back down because of fear. These are just the beginnings of birth pains, but goodness, what a child will be birthed. All the pain and darkness you know now will fade away into distant memory.
Dawn will come.
The morning will come again.
YAHWEH yearns over the earth, hovering like a mother over her newborn, impatient to love it, desperate to hold it, longing to never let it go.
Damn the day our eyes fail to see the colors that are latent in this grey.
Wave the photograph back and forth and the truth begins to form, the light begins to grow.
Be patient.
Hope.
Hope.
Hope.

A beauty you cannot now imagine is coming.
A glory no word cannot articulate waits for us.
A morning so bright that even light cannot illuminate it will dawn.

And then, we will not hope anymore.
Because Hope has arrived.
Wait.
Hope.

“I would have lost heart, unless I had believed That I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living.
Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD!”
Psalms 27:13-14