Witnesses to Hope

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.
Marilynne Robinson in Gilead

There are a thousand thousand people on any given day who cannot think of one sufficient reason to live this life.
There are a few thousand who will decide this is their last day.
There are a few who say goodbye.

It is enough for me to find just one reason to live today.
It is enough for me to help someone else find just one reason today.
One is enough.
Fully sufficient.

Some mornings it’s hard for me to choose which gem to share with you.  .  .  but this is the one that I finally decided upon.  It’s another from Amy Carmichael.  She looks at how Jesus always had hope for His disciples, and so this is true for us as well. She’s commenting on Romans 15:13: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

     These words have often helped us to go on hoping for those who were disappointing us.  But this morning they came differently to me.
     ‘Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations.’  A few hours later — ‘Could ye not watch with Me one hour?’  Very soon after — ‘All the disciples forsook Him and fled.’
     ‘They have kept Thy word’ …

Come, perpetual joy.
Come, unwitherable wreath.
Come, O purple raiment of our Lord and God.
Come, girdle, clear as crystal and many-coloured with precious gems.
Come, inaccessible refuge.
Come, Thou whom my poor soul desireth and hath desired.
Come, lonely One, to the lonely one–for lonely I am, as Thou canst see.
Come, Thou who hast become my longing, for that Thou hast ordained,
that I must needs long for Thee whom no human breath has ever reached.
Come, my breath and my life.
Come, joy, glory, and my incessant delight.

~Symeon the New Theologian

Come, true light,
Come, eternal life,
Come, secret of hiddenness.
Come, delight that has no name.
Come, unutterableness.
Come, O presence, forever fleeing from human nature.
Come, everlasting jubilee.
Come, light without end.
Come, awaited by all who are in want.
Come, resurrection of the dead.
Come, mighty one, forever creating, recreating, and renewing with a mere wave of Thy hand.
Come, Thou who remainest wholly invisible, for none ever to grasp or to caress.
Come, Thou who flowest in the river of hours,
yet immovably stayest above it,
who dwellest above all heavens,
yet bendest to us who are bowed down.

~Symeon the New Theologian

to be continued . . .