Holding Hope

I’m sitting in the shade of my patio, listening to crickets chirp, leaves rustle, and cars pass by in the distance. It’s time to write, the opportunity is ripe, but the clacking of my keys is sparse. I keep looking around me, taking my eyes away from the blinking line awaiting my words, words that don’t want to make the journey from my brain to my fingertips and into this digital world. My eyes continually flit back to the porcelain mug on my glass top table. Drips of coffee have dried on its white surface, there’s a smudge of peanut butter from my breakfast, and the words hope*writers stare back at me. They feel like a challenge, like a calling this morning, asking me not just to write, but to write hope.

What is hope? Is it an optimistic perspective, the proverbial glass half-full? I look into my mug and see only the dregs of coffee remaining, pooled into the base’s rim, and I think that’s hope. It’s not a perspective of what you have; it’s what remains when the cup is empty. When desires, dreams, and hard work are gone, when they’ve been consumed or evaporated or dashed across the ground and what’s left is the emptiness of disappointment and the sediment of brokenness, hope is what believes that the cup can and will be filled again.

Today the words to write hope elude me. I’ve spent hours in this wicker chair and have a measly word count to show for it. But that’s okay because I don’t need to have all the words. I am a writer, but Jesus is the author and perfecter of my faith. I know where to look for hope, even if my prose won’t flow. So today, I’m not a hope*writer, I’m a hope holder.

“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” Hebrews 10:23

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1

“May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.” Psalms 33:22