Over time I've learned well that love is a decision far more often than it is a feeling.
Quietly sitting up at night with a sick child.
Picking your husband's clothes off the floor for the millionth time.
Calling a friend to let them vent.
Flying half way across the country to be there when someone needs you.
Love is an action. A verb. A call. A discipline. Love is hard work.
Hope, I've come to realize, is similar.
I hope I get new shoes for christmas. Is not far from loving those shoes when they show up under the tree.
Those emotions are real. But there is a deeper hope just as there is a deeper love. Hope saves space for God to work. Hope is not giving up on someone. Hope is recognizing how messed up the world is but living into the possibility that God is present anyway.
Tonight I got a call from my dear friend who struggles with alcohol. She stores up so much grace and yet, just as hard, she falls. She is a living parable and teaches me how to see with God's eyes.
I watch her struggle. I see her heart. I carry her pain. I know the demons that follow her.
As I watch her life unfold I am invited to greet every new day as a new day. I am invited to be hope.
So many days I want to throw in the towel. I want to stop choosing hope. I want to give up and say this is hopeless.
But, as I am called to love.
So I am called to hope.
So, today, again, I chose hope.
3 comments:
A good one for all of us. Hope as an action usually means Trust. The radical stuff we give to the universe. Which circles around to Faith. H = T + F.
It's times like right now when hope wanes and trust is impossible. Faith seems to be following.
How to isolate faith? F = H - T ? Maybe.
I am on my way to Japan next week for a pilgrimage to find this answer. My 'F' is flickering and I need to sit with the Buddha and figure it out. Without it, I know H and T are not possible.
Indeed, these are F'in times! :)
Blessings on your journey. I hope you get the F knocked into you :)
I agree that hope, trust and faith are interlocked and faith is needed to give courage to trust and hope.
Please share any insights that your journey blesses you with. They are always quite meaningful to me.
I didn’t have the equation set up correctly. Isolate Faith as follows:
F = T - H
Having faith requires trust. It doesn’t require hope. Hope, for all its positiveness, leads to attachment—often to an outcome. That attachment leads to suffering.
Trusting that “the Lord works in mysterious ways” is the Christian form of faith less hope.
Buddhism teaches pure mind, right action, correct conduct. No attachment. That too, means faith less hope.
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