Hope has always seemed like some dreamy, far-off thing to me. A gauzy curtain out ahead somewhere and not terribly relevant, really, to today. But it’s actually entirely relevant. And very hard work.
Planting Trees
Eric and I were walking around our property on Sunday afternoon looking at the trees that we’ve planted and looking for places where we might plant the ones he’s just ordered. We stopped to admire the growth we got in a single summer. It was small but obvious. They had grown.
These particular plants are pear trees. They’re barely more than a single stick right now. But at some point in the future, they will be fairly large and produce more pears than we can preserve in a fall. At least that’s the goal.
And I was struck by the hope of it all.
Roots and Dreams
For every tree we plant, we are doing a small amount of work in order to create a future we don’t yet have.
And that, really, is the heart of hope.
It’s not a flimsy, gauzy thing that doesn’t have any connection to today. It’s the hard work of hope that connects every today together until it combines to become the future we can’t wait to see.
It’s planting four seeds that someday will be pear trees. And then planting some more.
It’s sitting down to write words that some days don’t come easily. But writing them anyway.
The hard work of hope is the single verse you memorize, the prayer you pray today, that combines with all the other verses and all the other prayers to build an intimacy with a God who hears and speaks.
Every single instance, the one day of work, the one child encouraged, the one moment when you put down your phone and look someone else in the eye. They all are hard work. But we do them out of hope. Out of the belief that our life, our world, can be better, one tiny step at a time.
The Hard Work of Hope
Not everyone will understand what you’re doing or the life you’re trying to create. That’s okay.
We planted pear trees and blueberry bushes so that, some day, we’ll have shelves and freezers full of fruit that we picked and canned and preserved. Others prefer to buy such things from the store. Good for them. Good for us.
The dreams don’t have to be the same. But the heartbeat of hope always is.
It’s the hard, daily work of consistently putting pennies in the jar, knowing that someday, each one of those pennies will be part of the big and beautiful future you’re hoping to have.
That’s what my brother-in-law did. He was single for years, waiting for the right girl to come along. And when she finally did, this past summer, he poured out those coins and bought her an engagement ring. But he’d been doing the hard work of hoping for years.
You can, too.
Every single one of us can do this. We can do this. We can do the hard work of hope.
Start today. Then do it again tomorrow. And the next day. Until someday, you pour out that jar of pennies and realize you’ve arrived at a future you actually want to have.
