When we consider things going on in our lives, or in the lives of those we love, it sometimes can feel like our hope is hanging by a...thread. So precarious. The slightest of shifts in the wrong direction, or things not turning out the way we wanted, seem quite capable of severing our hope. Maybe this is because our hope is so thin...or, at least, our perception of it.
An irony is that when we are hanging on to our 'thread' so carefully, so protectively, we actually prevent hope from growing. Our hope, in this mode, only seems to narrow.
When, however, we don't cling so tightly to the fragility of the thing we are hoping for and turn to what gives us real hope in the first place, we start to discover that the Giver of hope causes us to see something different. To know something different. In fact, to hope in something different.
And, we become less tentative and fearful about the thing we are afraid will happen or that we will lose. We begin to live more fully out of our true hope and let it grow into the cord that is much stronger than we previously perceived.
Love drives out fear. Fear keeps things small and tight. Love grows, is elastic, and creates freedom.
It is almost as if love allows 'our thread' to mysteriously become a strong cable of connection to our Hope -- a kind that is unseverable.
We may still feel, or imagine, great scissors around us...getting closer and closer to cutting the cord on us or on someone we love. But, we now also know that our real Hope has made our position secure. No cutting can separate us...or those we love.
And, we live out of this knowledge that now has become faith. And, we love, instead of living afraid.
...and our thread starts to be seen for what it really is, thicker and thicker and thicker.
