I hear clamor and it catches my attention, which is its intention, the devil's invention, probably. There is a noise that draws me in and I read and I hear and wish I hadn't. I wish I had avoided the loud and sat with the silent. I am that mob on the playground when the fight breaks out and I feed it. I feed on it. Fear-mongers breed epidemics of scandal and what-ifs and they crown propaganda with diadems of disgrace. Always in my face. Always something to fear and a way to prolong the temporary but avoid the eternal.
What are you talking about? What are you feeding me, feeding you, feeding the masses who look for hope and find what you offer?
When I give a reason for hope, it has to be more than the pot you stirred and more than wishful thinking. More than cotton candy clouds and pretty dreams, more than a way to cope and sand for your head or pillows for your weary imaginings.
I am not looking for a place to bury, for ocean front foundations, for castles wiped away. The hope I know I feel I cling to I have.
Running on.
But it needs fed and tended.
Hope is feet entering the water. Hope is something coming next, something filling now, something new out of that place where you thought you'd drown.
Hope is truth and that hurts sometimes, scars sometimes, leaves you wounded and broken sometimes. But there is always more. There is always a depth with hope and not a shallow-ending.
Everything outside of us is temporary but in us is eternity, one way or another. We are the permanent ones and there is a place for us forever.
Fill me with what lasts, what endures, what never perishes, and what cures all the cynicism and skepticism.
If you have to tell me bad news, tell me the Good News in the middle, tell me the hope at the end. Tell me there is more than the funeral dirge of this world and the stock-piles I can store up to save a life.
Tell me there is music I can't even imagine.
Tell me Jesus is a song we can't quite sing yet, and I'll keep trying. I'll have hope.