4 posts tagged “hope”

"Our mission[especially at St. Clare's Episcopal Church] is to plant ourselves at the gates of hope--not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; not the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges (people cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through); nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of "Everything Is Gonna Be All Right." But a different, sometimes lonely place, of truth-telling about your own soul first of all and its condition, the place of resistance and defiance, from which you see the world both as it is and as it should be, as it will be; the place from which you glimpse not only struggle but joy in the struggle.  And we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we're seeing, asking them what they see.

--Victoria Safford

As the old year turns my thoughts a fellow parent also turn towards my children.  I often wonder about the decision I have made to guide, nurture and direct them, and how the decisions my wife and I make enable our childern to grow into adulthood. My feelings are reflective of this age of instant gratification (I want to know our work will will stick...and I want to know it now!) and it seems to me that those good things we plant in our children (or those we love for that matter) do not always bear immediate fruit. 

 

Leo Tolstoy and Reinhold Niebuhr remind us that our most important acts require not only that we wait, but that we must have faith that they will bear fruit.  Indeed, we may never fully see what will come to pass, but we must place our comfort in the One who is the source of all our good aspirations.  The following quotes come from those two soul giants. I pray you treasure them in your heart as you wait for those good things you have nurtured in your children and in those whom you love.

 

“The most important acts, both for the one who accomplishes them and for his fellow creatures, are those that have remote consequences.” –Leo Tolstoy

 

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.  Nothing which is true and beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.  Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.  No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint; therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.”  Reinhold Niebuhr The Irony of American History, 1952 

Yours for the reign of God,

Ron