Hope redefined

Hope is many things to many people. To some, in this economic crisis, hope is about holding onto what financial security you have, keeping your job, providing for your family. To others battling with sickness, hope is finding a cure or responding to treatment in a way that prolongs life. For the child who has been abandoned hope is finding someone to love you for who you are, someone not scouting for the 'perfect child.'

Hope is as distant or as close to you as you can imagine. There is no doubt, after what most of the world hails as a certain triupmh, that President-Elect Obama must carry with him a sense of hope for facing this season of the world's history. There is too no doubt that the Palestinian mother, desperate to shelter her children from the terrors of war, must embrace a sense of hope for another day, no matter how miniscule. Some child who lets dusk's sunshine touch his face in the middle of his urban ghetto, aware that the night may bring trouble, lives with a private notion that tomorrow may be a better day...he too must hide hope away in his heart.

While no one quite knows with definitive accuracy what 2009 might bring, and the pundits all tout their various philosophies, my soul is poised for a shift in Divine providence, allowing hope to cradle me in it's firm grasp.