The moment you wake, and you’re facing the day, what hope are you taking on with you?

What hope for yourself, for the people you care, the world as you want it to be:

What hope do you wish to hold on to?

This hope might be wondering, distant, or just out of sight – but stay with me, my friend, it’s there!

Hope we can summon, and draw on this hope to sustain us, at the time when you’re needing it most:

When you find yourself at your lowest, when your dream seems to slip through your fingers, when you step out to champion the person who is looking to you for support, inspiration and courage…

Those are times that you reach for hope:

For hope isn’t a task, but a stretch towards life that feels better.

Stretch can often bring pain, but a must in preventing more damage, more hurt in the long run.

So we’re reaching for hope in a time when there’s no hope in sight.

I remember when our little son would point up to the ceiling at night, and repeat, in bold fascination:

“Lights! Lights! Lights! It’s the lights!”

Then he said it the next day, and I got confused – it’s daylight, so why say it now?

Then I thought, he is pointing towards where the lighting should be!

So it is true for hope – it is right here, it lives in your heart, even when you can’t see it.

It’s here, my friend, so please, hold on to the hope, even when you can’t see it, hope that can be different, hope that things can, and do change – for the better!

This week on the podcast, I am talking about the five hopes of the human condition – the hopes we all share for ourselves and each other:

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