“Hope is the feeling we have
that the feeling we have
is not permanent.”
                                         MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The above quote showed up in my email today and I thought I would share it. It spoke to me because I had been feeling very sad. We just recently lost both a beloved cat and a beloved dog. Both passings felt like body blows. But this quote, and a new day, brought me back to something I know to be true: Our feelings are not permanent, and they are a product of our thinking even more than our circumstances. It is a truth I believe to be true, I just need reminders here and there.

Hope is a funny word. It is a verb not a noun. It is an action therefore, not a static thing. I love that about hope. It means it is both active in our lives, -- and causes us to be active in feeling it, and expressing it, and sharing it with those who may seem hopeless.

We all have opportunities to share hope. The other day, I passed a man on our back road trudging along in the middle of a snowstorm. He put his thumb out for a ride but I drove on by. After doing my business in town and returning home I saw him again. By now it was dusk, and I thought it was pretty dangerous, and very cold, to be hitchhiking. I was quiet in my thought as I passed him, asking if I should do something to help in a practical way. The thought came to turn around and see where he was going. I did. He was going into town, and I told him to jump in. He put a mask on and told me he didn’t want me to feel uncomfortable. (It hadn’t even occurred to me, but I thanked him). We drove into town and he told me his story. It was a sad story, but he was hopeful it was going to turn around. I dropped him off at the grocery store and drove back home, glad to have been able to do a small act of kindness for a fellow child of God. His hopelessness that evening had been lifted and my sense of how everyone’s needs can be met in unexpected ways had been strengthened. Like getting that quote in my In box this morning. Like that.


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