Any words I might offer
Would detract from these
Stuck in my soul
Oozing the cure for not caring enough
Wrapping the wounds
In tight bands of open-eyed hope and mercy
With no further ado, here are the words, words I gathered from James Cone in his book The Cross and the Lynching Tree; words I hope will wound and heal in your soul as they have in mine. Grace and peace to you…
To continue the thread of making this site a better resource for you, I’ve added another ‘permanent’ page that will take you to posts that probe the concept and experience of Hope.
And don’t forget the pages on Prayer I added a few weeks ago.
Both pages are now part of the main menu above; you can also use the buttons below for easy access.
Grace and peace to you…
dw
Reflecting again on the nature of hope brings me back to a quote from Frederick Buechner I posted last year.
Click through to see where I think hope ends.
Then at last we see what hope is and where it comes from, hope as the driving power and outermost edge of faith. Hope stands up to its knees in the past and keeps its eyes on the future…shall is the verb of hope.
Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “A Room Called Remember”
Up to its knees in the past – becoming flame
Grace and peace to you…
dw
If I do not hope in His love for me, I will never really know Christ. I hear of Him by faith. But I do not achieve the contact that knows Him, and thereby knows the Father in Him, until my faith in Him is completed by hope and charity: hope that grasps His love for me and charity that pays Him the return of love I owe.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope
Faith without hope
is light without sight
warmth too far away to feel
music that can’t be heard
over the dry, drafty doctrine
that being correct is a higher calling
than simply being loved.
dw
p.s. I’ve written about this before with similar sentiment. I wish I had learned this lesson much earlier in my life.
Copyright © 2019, becomingflame.com
Hope seeks not only God in Himself, not only the means to reach Him, but it seeks, finally and beyond all else, God’s glory revealed in ourselves. This will be the final manifestation of His infinite mercy, and this is what we pray for when we say “Thy Kingdom come.”
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope
Ask for Me, and receive
that I have received you.
Seek Me, and find
that I have found you.
Knock and enter, knowing
that I knock and wait to enter.You already have what you truly hope for:
the Giver of Life
asking, seeking, knocking
to give you Life.
dw
Copyright © 2019, becomingflame.com
becoming flame 