Pandora's Box

Hope.

“Hope is the thing with feathers 


That perches in the soul,


And sings the tune--without the words,


And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard; 


And sore must be the storm 


That could abash the little bird 


That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,


And on the strangest sea; 


Yet, never, in extremity, 


It asked a crumb of me.”   Emily Dickinson

If love the foundation of our faith, I would like to claim that hope is its breath. I have really struggled this week with defining hope. All I know is though I cling to it, yet still its hold on me is stronger. There have been many times in my life I wanted to turn my back on Christianity, not because I believed it untrue but because it was the truth. The idea of intimacy, and trust scare me quite honestly. There is nothing more that I would love than to give up. But hope keeps its grip on me steady and secure, refusing to let up and allow me to give up. If faith is the wings that make us soar than hope is certainly the draft that lifts us up.

Hope has been dominant throughout generations, in stories, and myth. It confounds us and mystifies us. In Greek mythology when Pandora opened her fated box and unleashed the troubles on the world, hope was left within fluttering to get out. Without hope the world and mankind failed, for hope is the wife of despair, a companion to our pain. She pushes us and nurtures us. In a way she is a bigger curse than all the plagues on mankind. She keeps our dreams alive and makes us constantly walk on the edge of them being broken. She is the wind beneath our wings.

It has lead me to the conclusion I may never be able to define it, or completely understand it, but I will accept and praise God for it. Hope holds me within its embrace and today, I could not be more pleased for it.