Abiding Realities

‘Life is characterised by ambiguity,’ the teacher told the students before asking them whether they agreed or not. One bright spark thought up the perfect response. ‘Yes…and no,’ he said. Doesn’t it seem though that life has an uncomfortable degree of ambivalence because while our confidence surges when exposed to random acts of kindness where we’re least likely to find it, humankind can sometimes stoop to lows unimagined. So we remain uncertain of whether the world as our global village will ever come to the place where people can live as close to Utopia as possible. Sometimes we feel like just as we’ve discovered one solution, a new problem arises to sap our strength. What we need to stabilise our dreams, fuel our highest aspirations for a humanity that connects with each other despite our differences, is a daily injection of hope.

The bible talks about hope, together with faith and love as abiding realities. In reference to time, the word for our English word ‘abiding’ is ‘me-no`,’ meaning to ‘continue to be, not to perish, to last, endure.’ So much in our world today threatens the prospect of hope lasting, enduring. So much in our world today resists the idea of hope flourishing…but hope, like faith and love is an abiding reality destined to ‘not perish,’ rising another day so that it can ‘continue to be.’ Nothing then, no matter how obstinate, no matter how unrelenting will remove hope from our sights and fill our hearts with apprehension. A generation consumed with hope will soon overthrow fear’s dark days and live to tell another generation of how hope championed our cause.