A surprise rainbow or a night’s shooting star, an unlikely act of kindness, a piece of moving music, a soul-delivered “I love you,” the ringing hospital bell at the end of treatment, sitting around a dinner table laughing with people you love. Each of these have the power to lift your spirit with newfound hope.

Maybe you feel that “hope” has become a cliché, “sweet”—lacking in muscle. I am here to tell you that hope is real, and as necessary as oxygen. To live in this conflicted world without hope is to watch your soul shrink within you; to abdicate a life of deep meaning and regular joy. A friend of mine in the trenches of terminal brain cancer said that he would drag himself to church on Sunday morning just to hear me say the word “hope.” It was not a platitude but a lifeline. Hope keeps us putting one foot in front of the other in the wilderness, eyes peeled, hearts open, for where heaven might break through next.

Experiences of profound goodness, near perfect beauty, the truly holy make one at any age grateful to be alive. The evidence is all here to support what our souls already know to be true. We are part of a wildly creative reality intended for love, and wholly divine. Yet, look at how easily we become overwhelmed by the dark and negative; our senses dulled to all the wondrous here. We forget we are standing on God’s created holy ground. If we are not intentional, the imperfections and brokenness in our lives and in our world will outshine the glories right before our eyes. 

Emily Dickinson wisely proclaimed, “Those who have not found heaven below, will fail at it above.”

Hope is a belief, a presence, but most importantly—it is a daily practice.

My daily discipline (and salvation) in seasons of uncertainty and sorrow is to try to view the world through God’s eyes as a holy place of beauty, possibility, and especially love. Always spying for a bit of the eternal in my fragile, finite existence. Having the courage to walk through the world’s darkness in search of promised glints of light. The soul is a remarkable divining rod for the good, the holy, the beautiful. 

The moment you start noticing the grace in your life, your daily existence will be transformed. Here’s to MORE HOLY in our lives!