![]() Hope is to open yourself up to let God do His work in you in ways that transcend your imagination. As Jesus said, “When you are young you put your own belt on and went where you wanted to go. And God is God of the present because He is God of Eternity. Here and now matters because God is a God of the present. But because we wait with hope we know that what we are waiting for is already here. And the whole of the spiritual life is saying that God is right with us, right now, so that we can wait for His coming, and this waiting is a waiting in hope. You already have a sense of what is to come. ![]() If you live with hope, you can live very much in the present because you can nurture the footprints of God in your heart and life. Jesus is saying that the world is dark, and will remain dark. Remain focused.” Don’t think that things will clean up, and finally there won’t be any more pain. Stand with your head erect in the presence of the Son of Man. There’s no place where Jesus says, “One day it will all be wonderful.” He talks about enormous agony, but He says, “You, you (my beloved ones) pray unceasingly that you will keep your heart focused on Me. ![]() When Jesus talks about the future or the end of the world, He describes wars, people in anguish, nation rising against nation, and earthquakes. But Jesus doesn’t speak like that at all. Many people think that hope is optimism, looking at the positive side of life. But hope is precisely to say, “I don’t know how God is going to fulfil His promises, but I know that He will, and therefore I can live in the presence with the knowledge that He is with me.” I can then know and trust that the deepest desires of my being will be fulfilled. It’s very concrete: I want a toy or a car or a new job. The whole Christmas period is full of wishes. We lived in a world where people don’t know much about hope. Jonas’ book, published in 1998, on Father Henri J.M. The passages below are taken from Robert A. Those who choose, even on a small scale, to love in the midst of hatred and fear are the people who offer true hope to our world. By choosing love they became witnesses not only to human resiliency but also to the divine love that transcends all human loves. Many people who have suffered the most horrendous rejections and been subject to the most cruel torture have been able to choose love. They are not condemned to be victims! There remains within them, hidden as it may seem, the possibility to choose love. How can someone ever trust in the existence of an unconditional divine love when most, if not all, of what he or she has experienced is the opposite of love-fear, hatred, violence, and abuse? Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day all lived with a promise in their hearts that guided them toward the future without the need to know exactly what it would look like. ![]() The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.Īll the great spiritual leaders in history were people of hope. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. Hope is trust that God will fulfil God’s promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. Optimism is the expectation that things-the weather, human relationship, the economy, the political situation, and so on-will get better. Optimism and hope are radically different attitudes. Nouwen’s book “ Bread for the Journey,” published in 1997. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.The following passages are taken from Father Henri J.M. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. “Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.” - Audre Lorde It comes from taking responsibility and advancing our common humanity.” - Hillary Clinton “Dignity does not come from avenging insults, especially from violence that can never be justified. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we're able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.” - Angelina Jolie “We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. “When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society.” - Pope John Paul II
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