Hope

Hope. What a beautiful word, like musical sunshine.

Hope is the enticement that leads us forward on the path. It is what, at times, keeps us from plopping down in despair, never to get up.

Hope is Marian Wilson talking, singing, climbing stairs and making progress after her stroke, when at first the doctors said if she survived, she'd be in a vegetative state. Hope is knowing we didn't have to believe that. Hope is knowing our God can do anything when that "anything" is within His will.

We Christians are an Easter people, a people who live with the knowledge that resurrection lies beyond every cross.

After I received the Sacrament of Confirmation a few years back, an astonishing thing happened to me: hope came in the form of music. For months afterward, original words and music popped into my head, as though poured from above, over and over, like this one about Easter:

He came to the earth wrapped in human clothes
To show us the love of the Father, that's the role He chose
And when He died on that cross, it seemed that all was lost
Until on the third day He rose

He's alive! He rose from the grave that Easter morn
He's alive! In every heart that turns to Him and is reborn
He's alive in you, and He's alive in me
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Blessed Trinity

Mary went to the tomb
Expecting darkness and death and gloom
But what she found there instead
Was our Lord, who wasn't dead
She ran to spread the news

He's alive! He rose from the grave that Easter morn
He's alive! In every heart that turns to Him and is reborn
He's alive in you, and He's alive in me
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Blessed Trinity

We can know the love of this risen Lord
He knocks, and He's waiting for an open door
He longs to come in, and cleanse our hearts from sin
He lives your soul to win

He's alive! He rose from the grave that Easter morn
He's alive! In every heart that turns to Him and is reborn
He's alive in you, and He's alive in me
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Blessed Trinity

There is always hope! Can you hear me humming? ;)