HOPE | DAY 4 OF 31
This largely unedited free-write is linking up with the Write 31 Days Challenge. // indicates the start and stop of five minutes. The prompt word for today under the 31 Days of Five Minute Fridays is HOPE.
My 31 Day writing series is called
31 Days of living well
Ready, Steady, Go...
// Sometimes at the end of a long hard journey we can compliment the adventurer who undertook it and say “you did well” or when someone passes away after a difficult illness we say they “shame, they did so well”. I once did a mountain climb that I was convinced was going to kill me! At the end of the climb, people said to me, “you did so well!”. But, upon reflection I know that what they meant was, “You made it”.
The truth is, I didn't do the climb well, I just survived it.
My attitude was bad, my experience was fraught and I was anything but a blessing to the people on the climb with me. I survived, but I didn’t do the climb well.
I often think it is the same with the way we live life. We are alive, we are living and we are surviving. And at the end of a trial, people say we did well, but truth is we aren’t living well.
I believe hope is an inescapable necessity for life.
A dear friend and mother to me walked the most radical life journey and a little under two weeks ago, she took her final steps into eternity. My heart aches that she is gone and it breaks for the family and friends she leaves behind. Her life is the kind of life that words like legend, champion, giant and legacy get put to. She truly lived! She lived a glorious, hope filled, infectious life, that has impacted people across the world. Dee Harris talked about hope and hers were the only words I hear when thinking about it.
She said, “when I talk about hope today I am not talking about a gullible hope, I’m not talking about wishful thinking or naive optimism. I’m not talking about the bright side of life, positive stuff, motivational stuff. That is not the hope I’m talking about. I’m talking about a hope that is grounded in the person of Jesus Christ and that is who we are called to have and put our hope in.”
That is gospel truth. And she lived that, every day even to the end. Dee didn’t just survive, or make it. She lived well. She sucked the marrow out of every single day. She loved to win! She used to say that she was a prisoner of hope, condemned to victory.
And so I ask you, do you have the kind of hope that she was talking about?
Sometimes we feel like we have to hold on to hope and that is true, there is a sense of holding on to promises, to the future vision, to dreams. That is not a bad thing, I would say that too is vital.
But, the hope that darling Dee talked about, is the kind of hope that holds on to you.
However, this kind of hope can only be found in the person of Jesus.
When we have and put our hope in Him, He holds on to us and pulls us through even when we don’t have the strength to carry on. He seeds joy that produces strength, peace that surpasses understanding, faith that can move mountains. He causes us to live well, in spite of the difficulties and challenges we face. A hope in Him, is a hope that lifts us up and causes us to win. And this in turn means we don’t have to struggle, survive and just finish or “make it” - causing people to say we “did well”. But this hope sustains you and guards your heart and mind so that, day by day, you actually live well. That is real hope.//
Thanks for stopping by, K xx