Hope is hard to manufacture

Hope is hard to see. It doesn’t come neatly packaged in a box with a beautiful ribbon.

It doesn’t appear in the display cabinet so that you can simply ask for “three of those please”.

Instead, it’s expressed in the five newly laid eggs in the reed nest created by our pair of Canada Geese on the lake. It’s the sight of individual, fragile stems carrying vivid blue buds, casting a shimmer at a distance in the woods.

Or the autistic youngster coming to life when they meet an alpaca for the first time.

It’s that calling deep, deep in our heart with the promise of a new dawn. Even when it’s dark.

And hope growns when we act on that spark, however faint. When we speak it out, even though it sounds so tentative. Like something that the breeze could blow away.

Most importantly hope has a source. And that is beyond me, surprising me every time.

Where is your hope?