Like a Moon

Arriving before dawn, clothed in garments of unbearable light, like a gem stone against the foil of despair, hope comes to earth and makes her bed in the world of men. Lying with those rich in doubt – for it is only they who need her touch – she makes herself known to the mortals who wrestle with the impossible idea of God.

Rising, still before the sun, hope offers her company to earth’s children. Treading weary roads, clouded with improbable truths, she shows them the divinity in trees and heaven’s music in stories and art. She feeds them the daily bread of what will be, while it is not yet light, but the price they pay lies in sharing the bitter wine of loss. For she knows, beacon of light though she may be, that it is this cup, swallowed in darkness, that brings sight to the blind and light to the world.

Show me a man swollen with certainty, strutting about midday as though he has made the sun, and I will show you a man without a shred of hope. Such a man is lost in the ignorance of his modern mind; he knows not himself, nor his god, but only the fruit of his infatuations. Like a child making a wish on a dying star, he believes it is his faith or formula, proved in outcomes, which will save him.

But hope is a mystery untamed, immortal, and completely without finite form. She cannot be manipulated by the world of men – righteous or not – because she is not mortal, she is not fashioned from the fibers of the natural world; she was borne on the breath of eternity and can never be found in an outcome.

The essence of hope, then, lies in things unseen, tied not to the pattern of this world, to fleeting success or desired results. Like the moon, hope simply reflects the light of the sun, who to our finite eyes, appears to have left us alone in the dark.

But now we see through a glass dimly, but, oh, then shall we see face to face!

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