Estoy tomando un descanso, regreso pronto!

(Taking a break, will be back soon! In the meantime, enjoy a message from our guest blogger!)

Psalm 31:24 : Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD.

Hope is an amazing thing, some things we hope for are well within our expectations, others, like hoping you’d be invited to do a guest blog post on one of the internet’s top sites – well that’s beyond the hope of this writer.

But here we are so I will speak of hope.

January ends tomorrow and January is all about beginnings – a New Year, new resolutions, planning, looking toward longer days and Spring sun shine, graduations, Summer vacations, new jobs, and births, and …. well, you name it.

We don’t approach January thinking about endings – that’s what December was for, and beginnings are really all about hope. We hope for a myriad of all things possible. Even resolutions (remember you made those about 30 days ago) are full of hope – healthier, kinder, better, and all filled with hope.

At times in life we take steps – submit an application, take an exam, ask someone for help, take music lessons when you’ve never played an instrument or read a line of music, decide to move to a new city when it would be safer to stay at home, go to school in a foreign country instead of the next county, always looking to that change with a measure of anxiousness in our chest, yet hope within our heart.

But hope makes the unknown result achievable. We have hope so we risk rejection, discomfort, sadness at leaving someplace or out and out failure –knowing if nothing else I’ll have the lessons and experience, at least something to sooth the humiliation.

Hope is a great thing – it is no mystery why it’s listed as one of the 3 greatest. Self-sacrificing love is the greatest of course, but think about it, doesn’t hope enable such love?

So, as the beginning month ends, I’d invite you to ponder hope and all the goodness it can hold for our expectations of the coming year.

I’d like to end with perhaps my favorite poem (and a thanks to Christy for letting me experience something I’d never imagine to hope for – a guest blog post):

"Hope" is the thing with feathers - (314)

“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