Hope is one of the most important attitudes we can cultivate in our lives.
It arises when we allow ourselves to believe in the existence of a power greater than us that we are intimately connected to and that wants the best for us. It is rekindled when we accept the possibility that there is a greater plan which we are part of, and that within that plan our lives and how we live them does matter. Hope is reborn when we can believe that our prayers and cries are heard and that the world of spirit responds to our call and help is already granted, although we don’t even know how such help can manifest.
When we refuse to listen to the voice of our analytical mind, telling us that there is no way out of our misery, and instead trust in the power of our heart, then hope begins to unfold like a flower opening to the caressing rays of the sun; and with hope come renewed strength, creative impulse, courage and an inner lightness that carries us out of our paralysis into movement and a new beginning.
I don’t know whether the prisoners in the concentration camps believed in a higher power. But I am sure that those who survived this unimaginable suffering had somehow managed to keep hope alive.
Hope lives in the heart – it is there in even the most desperate moments, buried under our pain and despair. But it is often only in the darkest of moments that we uncover this precious jewel – because there is nowhere else to go and the only thing to do is surrender to something that is greater than us. We have exhausted our own resources and just as the darkness begins to swallow us up, a little spark of hope arises out of nowhere – rekindled by the infinite love of that greater power that created us.
Hope is our saviour in these difficult times that humanity and this planet face at the moment. It allows us to believe in the inherent goodness in people’s hearts, in the possibility for change, in a better future for us and our children.
Hope keeps people alive and determined to find solutions and create change. With all the cruelty, greed, distruction and heartlessness that we witness daily in our world, we need hope today just as much as the people in the concentration camps all those years past.
