Hope

All joy emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. The fact that our heart yearns for something Earth can’t supply is proof that Heaven must be our home.

If the God who revealed life to us, and whose only desire is to bring us to life, loved us so much that he wanted to experience with us the total absurdity of death, then—yes, then there must be hope; then there must be something more than death; then there must be a promise that is not fulfilled in our short existence in this world; then leaving behind the ones you love, the flowers and the trees, the mountains and the oceans, the beauty of art and music, and all the exuberant gifts of life cannot be just the destruction and cruel end of all things; then indeed we have to wait for the third day.

To all who are tossed by the waves, you are the calm of the harbor; you are the hope of the hopeful. You are the health of the sick, you relieve the needy and guide the blind. To those exposed to punishment on every count, you are merciful; to the weary, a wall; in darkness, light… I beg you not to decide, Lord, that I am unworthy of these sufferings that my brethren have been allowed to undergo. Let me share the crown with them; let me be with them in glory, as I have been with them in prison.

A new day will come And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.

There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet.

What I, what all of us, have instead is a God who resurrects us from the dead, putting an end to it by working through it instead of around it — creating life in the midst of grief, creating love in the midst of loss, creating faith in the midst of despair… showing us by his own example that the only road to Easter morning runs through Good Friday.

Since the fall of man, God’s promise to redeem and restore has permeated the air and found its way into the lyrics of kings and criminals. It has been the anthem of the helpless, blind, lame, and guilt-ridden—a song of hope in the night… In the pasture-lands outside Bethlehem, this song rose like a celestial orchestra… Then all at once, as with the fall of a curtain, the night fell silent, and the audience went back to their homes. Bethlehem went back to being the ordinary town it had been for as long as anyone could remember. But the world would never be the same.

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

A light for you in the darkness, when all other lights go out.

Rebekka is a professional artist. She finds beauty in everything—even in me. Her delight in me gives me hope that in my murky, mixed-up soul there remains a burning loveliness that only God could have placed there, and that he is cultivating. For years now, she and I, together with other close friends, have grappled with the gospel in the warp and woof of our daily lives. She helps me to believe.

“Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live.”

I promise you these storms are only trying to wash you clean.

Look, I'm just a singer. But in the end, I want to tear a little corner off the darkness.

The future of the human family rides on… a promise spoken and not forgotten. A man named Abraham strode off into an unpredictable future because he gambled on the loyalty of a Promise uttered by a Presence he had scarcely begun to feel. And so a new possibility for history began. Moses tried to get a better fix on the identity of this Presence: "…what is your name?" he dared to ask. And the answer came: "…I am he who will be there with you" (Exod. 3:14). …Then a man from Galilee talked to his friends about sealing this ancient promise in his blood; and a day later he spilled it… on a mound they call Golgotha. "I am he who will be there with you" was there with us — dying, then rising, and then being with us until the end of the world. …Human destiny rests on a promise freely given and reliably remembered. Whenever you and I make and keep a promise, we are as close to being like God as we can ever be. When you say to anyone that you will be there with them, you are only a millimeter beneath the angels.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

God is, and all is well.

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

Live as though Christ died yesterday, rose from the grave today, and is coming back tomorrow.

If God be God, then no insoluble problem exists. And if God be my God, then no problem of mine is without its appropriate solution.

Nothing works out according to plan, but it always works out. local motto in Chihuahua, Mexico

I never ran 1,000 miles. I could never have done that. I ran one mile 1,000 times.

The Pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

You could not wish to have been born in a better time than when all is lost.

Heaven is not here, it's There. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for.

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD ’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.

The Statue of Liberty has another name: the Mother of Exiles. The nickname — symbolizing the United States as a nation of immigrants — was imagined by the poet Emma Lazarus, who in 1883 wrote the sonnet “The New Colossus” to raise money to create the statue’s pedestal. Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome … “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Those excerpts were inscribed on a plaque and mounted inside the monument — in 1903.

Then Aslan turned to them and said: “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.” Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.” “No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?” Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them. “There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.” And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic; it was not a place of myths explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.

Supermodels are beautiful girls, Will. A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you’ve been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man – promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it’s going to be okay. The supermodels, Willy? That’s all they are. Bottled promise. Scenes from a brand new day. Hope dancing in stiletto heels.

God weeps with us so that we may one day laugh with Him.

But Herod believed. At least, enough to worry. He was one prone to err on the side of caution, and so it was enough for him that the Magi had come so far, laden with such gifts. And if there was such a king, maybe the Magi could lead him there. Maybe if he feigned a desire to bring a tribute of his own, the Magi would trust him and lead him to this new king. “When you find him,” Herod told the visitors, “come back and tell me where he is. I have a little something of my own I want to give him.” (Mt 2: 8) After hearing him out, the Magi left for Bethlehem. It wasn’t long before their familiar star rose again, leading them as a shepherd leads its sheep to a house on the outskirts of town. When they found the king, it was no wonder he was nothing more than a murmur in Jerusalem. They entered the place where he lay and beheld a child in the arms of a young woman, practically still a girl. There was no crown or majesty that would attract them to him, no miracle they could see, no signs of greatness. Just a woman and her child. But there was something about that moment that only the woman, her husband, the Magi, and the child knew—something that bent the knees of those scholars to the posture of worship when they saw him… …For most of the residents of Bethlehem, Jesus’ birth went unnoticed, but heaven and earth converged in this little pocket of the Promised Land for the most important birth in history. The angels orchestrated the unlikely meeting of the poor, the displaced, and the curious to announce the coming of the Savior of the world. To some they appeared in dreams. To others they spoke from the sky. To others still, perhaps they shone like a star, leading the Magi to the place where the child was born. Through it all, the angels of the heavenly host had their eyes fixed on this village south of Jerusalem. Since the fall of man, God’s promise to redeem and restore has permeated the air and found its way into the lyrics of kings and criminals. It has been the anthem of the helpless, blind, lame, and guilt-ridden—a song of hope in the night, rolling in from some distant country with the trace of a melody known by heart. In the pasture-lands outside Bethlehem, this song rose like a celestial orchestra, crashing, singing, resounding with the music, holding nothing back. Then all at once, as with the fall of a curtain, the night fell silent, and the audience went back to their homes. Bethlehem went back to being the ordinary town it had been for as long as anyone could remember. But the world would never be the same.

Far above…the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart., as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.

And if your light goes out, I ache to be that spark, To reignite, you’ll never, Have to feel in the dark.

If you simply kept your eyes open, it seemed, you just might find something valuable in the most unlikely of places. The trick was to recognize a good thing when you saw it, no matter how odd or worthless it might at first appear, no matter who else might just walk away and leave it behind.

“The only time you don’t find a four-leaf clover,” he liked to say, “is when you stop looking for one.”

“And what of regrets? I shall live with them. I shall accept my regrets as part of my life, to be numbered among my self-inflicted wounds. But I will not endlessly gaze at them. I shall allow the memories to prod me into doing better with those still living. And I shall allow them to sharpen the vision and intensify the hope for that Great Day coming when we can all throw ourselves into each other's arms and say, "I'm sorry.”

I shall rise from the dead.... I shall see the Son of God, the Sun of Glory, and shine myself as that sun shines. I shall be united to the Ancient of Days, to God Himself, who had no morning, never began.... No man ever saw God and lived. And yet, I shall not live till I see God; and when I have seen him, I shall never die.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

Today is your day, your mountain is waiting, so get on your way.

It's wonderful for today, but what about tomorrow?

Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a consolation for the sorrow of this world, but an answer to that question, ‘Is it true?’

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next...Aim at heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in'; aim at earth and you will get neither.

One aspect of preparing well is having the right mind-set. “In so many areas of life, you need to be a long-term optimist but a short term realist”.

He hoped this would make his father more forgiving about Ove losing his job, once they were reunited. He had to sit on the wooden

“You only need one ray of light to chase all the shadows away,” she said to him once, when he asked her why she had to be so upbeat the whole time. Chapter 14. A Man Who Was Ove and a Woman on a Train

That is a chapter of ancient history which it might be good to recall; for there was sorrow then too, and gathering dark, but great valour, and great deeds that were not wholly vain.

There was a little corner of his mind that was still his own, and light came through it, as through a chink in the dark: light out of the past. It was actually pleasant, I think, to hear a kindly voice again, bringing up memories of wind, and trees, and sun on the grass, and such forgotten things.

My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many –yours not least.

‘Courage is found in unlikely places,’ said Gildor. ‘Be of good hope!

"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.

Whether it was set there, or let fall by chance, I cannot say; but it brings hope to me.

And both my fear and my hope proved ill-founded. For my hope was founded on a fat man in Bree; and my fear was founded on the cunning of Sauron. But fat men who sell ale have many calls to answer; and the power of Sauron is still less than fear makes it.

‘Despair, or folly?’ said Gandalf. ‘It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy!

‘The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.’ ‘Very well, very well, Master Elrond!’

‘The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.

‘I do not foretell, for all foretelling is now vain: on the one hand lies darkness, and on the other only hope. But if hope should not fail, then I say to you, Gimli son of Glóin, that your hands shall flow with gold, and yet over you gold shall have no dominion.

May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.

‘Unlooked-for?’ said Gandalf. ‘I said that I would return and meet you here.’

Gandalf laughed long and merrily. ‘The trees?’ he said. ‘Nay, I see the wood as plainly as do you. But that is no deed of mine. It is a thing beyond the counsel of the wise. Better than my design, and better even than my hope the event has proved.’ ‘Then if not yours, whose is the wizardry?’ said Théoden. ‘Not Saruman’s, that is plain. Is there some mightier sage, of whom we have yet to learn?’ ‘It is not wizardry, but a power far older,’ said Gandalf: ‘a power that walked the earth, ere elf sang or hammer rang.

But the time draws swiftly to some great conclusion. Storm is coming. Hasten while you may! If you are ready, let us go. The Sun will soon rise above the shadow.’

‘It’s saying a lot too much,’ said Frodo, and he laughed, a long clear laugh from his heart. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth. To Sam suddenly it seemed as if all the stones were listening and the tall rocks leaning over them. But Frodo did not heed them; he laughed again. ‘Why, Sam,’ he said, ‘to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you’ve left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. “I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why didn’t they put in more of his talk, dad? That’s what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam, would he, dad?”’

is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise.’ ‘Yet seldom do they fail of their seed,’ said Legolas. ‘And that will lie in the dust and rot to spring up again in times and places unlooked-for. The deeds of Men will outlast us, Gimli.’

I said victory could not be achieved by arms. I still hope for victory, but not by arms.

‘As I have begun, so I will go on. We come now to the very brink, where hope and despair are akin.

But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: ‘Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?’

‘A great Shadow has departed,’ said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears.

When shall I see a sign that it will ever be otherwise?’ ‘Turn your face from the green world, and look where all seems barren and cold!’ said Gandalf.

For it is said that, though the fruit of the Tree comes seldom to ripeness, yet the life within may then lie sleeping through many long years, and none can foretell the time in which it will awake. Remember this. For if ever a fruit ripens, it should be planted, lest the line die out of the world.

Out of doubt, out of dark, to the day’s rising he rode singing in the sun, sword unsheathing. Hope he rekindled, and in hope ended; over death, over dread, over doom lifted out of loss, out of life, unto long glory.

‘Elfstone, through darkness you have come to your hope, and have now all your desire. Use well the days!’

For, unlike some other identifications of human trouble, a diagnosis of sin and guilt allows hope. Something can be done for this malady. Something has been done for it.

The prophets knew how many ways human life can go wrong because they knew how many ways human life can go right. (You need the concept of a wall on plumb to tell when one is off.) These prophets kept dreaming of a time when God would put things right again. 5

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion – put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth? Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.

Beauty will save the world.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.

A book, too, can be a star, 'explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,' a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

Ye who think of sin but lightly, nor suppose the evil great, here may view its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimate. Mark the sacrifice appointed, see who bears the awful load; 'tis the Word, the Lord's Anointed, Son of Man and Son of God. Here we have a firm foundation, here the refuge of the lost: Christ's the Rock of our salvation, his the Name of which we boast. Lamb of God, for sinners wounded, sacrifice to cancel guilt; none shall ever be confounded, who on him their hope have built.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I will hope in him.

...but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not grow faint.

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

For nothing will be impossible with God.

To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.

Waiting is the hardest work of hope.

One day, we shall laugh ourselves to scorn that we looked for so little from thee; for thy giving will not be limited by our hoping.

At his birth the holy family was welcomed into a peasant home. These people did their best and it was enough.

No one ever disbelieved God because he promised too little. God promises the impossible.

Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a 'long defeat' — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.

Once in a lifetime the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.

Let the preacher tell the truth. Let him preach this overcoming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that “catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears,” which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have.

The wrath of God is not an emotion that flares up from time to time, as though God had temper tantrums; it is a way of describing his absolute enmity against all wrong and his coming to set matters right.

Men, for the most part, are not lost enough in their own feeling for a Saviour. A holy despair in ourselves is the ground of true hope.

The reason why Christians are so loth to exchange this world for a better is because they have more sense than faith: they see what they enjoy, they do but hope for that which is to come.

See a flame in a spark, a tree in a seed; see great things in little beginnings; look not so much to the beginning, as to the perfection, and so we shall be in some degree joyful in ourselves, and thankful unto Christ.

[Evil] can only be overcome in the last analysis by an intervention from another sphere. This is what is promised in Jesus Christ.