Hope

This text jumped out at me this morning: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”  Romans 8:22. Angst comes easy for me.  There is, I suppose, this tendency to compare, contrast, and link together like things, and angst is apparently no exception.  In contemplating Angst A I compare it to Angst B, and before long I have an A to Z angst chain that has me bound quite well.

Paul of course, offers the anecdote – hope.   “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”  Romans 8:18  Then, a bit later: “For in this hope we are saved.  But hope that is seen is no hope at all.  Who hopes for what he has?  Romans 8:24

That’s perhaps the best I can do for now.  It occurs to me that sometimes that is the best I can do in any troubling time – hope and wait, well, and pray.  In these thoughts I was reminded of a quote (this one by Vaclav Haval) I have written on a scrap of paper stuck in my Bible:

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”