Hope Springs Eternal ...

Three little words that mean one thing when they are hanging out together, but taken apart, they are powerful too …

‘Hope Springs Eternal’: There is always room for improvement – don’t give up … keep at it; there’s always tomorrow.

Fantastic concept right? It’s the stuff that dreams are made of …

‘Hope’: The general feeling that some desire will be fulfilled; optimism; encouragement; expectations; wishes.

‘Spring(s)’: grows; prospers; shoots forth; bends; proceeds; results; produces; explodes.

‘Eternal’: Being without beginning or end; continuing without interruption; perpetual; forever true or changeless; timeless; ageless; continual.

To look at these words and realize that there are those amongst us who ‘forever look for the best even in the face of adversity (Alexander Pope)’ is to be a true witness to the Faith of man – to stand in the presence of man’s ability to see the best in himself and his fellow man. Awesome, isn’t it?

We use the word HOPEFUL to describe that feeling we get when it looks like the walls are closing in, yet there is a ray of light struggling to shine through the rubble.

I like the word ‘HOPEFILLED’. To me, it points to a state of being where man has no choice but to fill up on Hope in order to be the light that he has to be in his day to day encounters. To be Hopefilled is to be above the flotsam and jetsam … to be in a state of higher consciousness and connection with Higher Source … in other words, for one to be Hopefulled, one must give all over to God. If we don’t hand over everything to God, we will have no room to be filled up with Hope.

Hope cannot survive in the face of doubt, blame, anger, vengefulness or any of the other poisons that we feel the need to cling to. It is important to empty the bin.

A wise woman said to me recently that once we have emptied the bin we need to be sure to thoroughly disinfect it, so as to prevent cross-contamination. What she was actually saying to me is that once we let go of the poison, we have to ensure that the ‘container’ where hope will be stored has been spiritually and emotionally cleaned and sanitized so that when Hope enters that space, it will be free to flourish. What good would it serve for Hope to enter into our hearts and be touched by poisons which would cause her to morph into contempt?

The wonderful thing is that once Hope is allowed into our lives, she always brings her sisters: Faith and Love.

Faith is the blind sister – and we are called to walk by Faith and not by sight. This is a difficult proposition for many if not all of us. We are a race of people who rely strongly on our optic nerves and sense, forgetting that we have four other senses to rely on. We forget that we must Taste life, Smell successes, and Hear our Maker’s voice in order to Speak joy, positivity into being.

Love is the strongest and most important of the three, for without her nothing is possible. Without Love, we merely exist. Without Love there is no spark. Love is the All Spark of our existence, a la Transformers … if we are not plugged in to Love, we have self sabotaged our existence.

So …

Today I choose to walk by Faith, with my heart Hopefilled, believing in and accepting the Love that I sense all around me …

What about you?