Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope

On his Boston Globe blog, Articles of Faith, Michael Paulson posts this photo he took while on vacation and walking through Wellfleet on the Cape.



He titled the photo/post "Reading the signs."

What's striking about the image of course is the juxtaposition of the two signs: precisely at the dead end is the option, the direction for hope. Just at the point where hope is gone, there is the need for it most telling, its possibility within reach for those willing to take a step beyond what seems hopeless.

Here's a collection of scripture verses on hope and hopefulness from the blog, Searching for Hope, written by a Presbyterian pastor, a cancer survivor. Note in these verses how hopelessness and hope are side by side, not unlike the signs on the tree in Wellfleet.

And there comes to mind, too, Emily Dickinson's short poem on hope, especially the line "and sweetest in the gale is heard..."

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

-ConcordPastor