Hope’s reason

 We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. (Romans 8:23-24a

The groaning of the world is too loud and obvious to require elaboration. No one needs to be told. The news is more than enough. Nor need we be tutored about the groaning of our hearts for fulfillment and a peace that does not evaporate in the gloom of gray days when spring has been postponed.

Our all-too-human sighs are not reason for despair, however, but the breath of morning, the early fulfillment of our hearts’ constant craving.

For what, at deepest level, do we long? What, if not for the love that heals the heart and stills the awful thirst for status, glory or power that strains relationships, divides nations and stains the earth with the blood of innocents?

What do we most deeply need, if not for holy kindness to heal our world and engulf our hearts that we might finally become human?

The heart’s sigh for universal healing—our dissatisfaction with what is and who we are—is not a cry of absence, but the presence of the Love we crave within us, longing for fulfillment. Strange, it is, ironic, that the experience of wanting is simultaneously an experience of the Love we most need, Love’s longing to fill all things.

Imprinted on our souls, in the unreachable depths of our hearts, this Love is a gift granted in our creation by the One who is Love.

Our longings, our sighs over life as it is, are reason for highest hope, for it means Love has not died within, but lives in our mortal flesh; our hearts have not forgotten or been diverted from the glory of love for which all things are created.

Knowing this, feeling this, hope saves us from sinking into the despondency of gray days when the sun refuses to shine, warmed as we are by the Love who does not die.

David L. Miller