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THE WAY things are is not the way things have to be.
Emmanual Katongole & Chris Rice, Reconciling All Things

WHAT THE EXODUS first taught: first, that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt. Second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land. And third, that "the way to the land is through the wilderness." There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.
Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution

THERE IS HOPE.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God gives milk
and I have the pail.
Anne Sexton, from "Snow"

I BELIEVE in the sun, even if it does not shine.
I believe in love, even if I do not feel it.
I believe in God, even if I do not see him.
An inscription on a wall of the Warsaw Ghetto by an unknown Jew, circa 1942 to hope against a hope is still a form of hoping.

THERE ARE none in the humanly "down" position so low that they cannot be lifted up by entering God's order, and none in the humanly "up" position so high that they can disregard God's point of view on their lives. … The barren, the widow, the orphan, the eunuch, the alien, all models of human hopelessness, are fruitful and secure in God's care.
Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

LAST NIGHT in the wee hours a thought came to me, to trust God beyond my own understanding of God. … The very next day and the day after I shared the thought with the young people I was teaching, and then I shared it with two friends my own age, and one said to trust God beyond our own understanding is what is required of us in dying, for our own understanding cannot penetrate the veil of death.
John S. Dunne, A Journey with God in Time: A Spiritual Quest

I HAVE a deep sense, hard to articulate, that if we could really befriend death we would be free people. … [O]ur lives would be significantly different if we could relate to death as a familiar guest instead of a threatening stranger. … Many people seem never to befriend death and die as if they were losing a hopeless battle. But we do not have to share that sad fate.
Henri J. M. Nouwen, A Letter of Consolation

let nothing disturb you, Nothing dismay you; All things are passing: God never changes. Patient endurance Attains all that it strives for; Those who have God Find they lack nothing. God alone suffices.
St. Teresa of Avila, from The Pilgrim Prayerbook: New Edition

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September 2008, Vol. 52, No. 9