I’m in the hope business. My glass is always full…even when it doesn’t look that way. It may only have a drop of water left, but the rest is filled with air. Even though you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Most unseen things are. Being hopeful in difficult circumstances can be challenging, but it’s infinitely easier if you remember your glass is filled with lots of unseen things….love, faith, and that sometimes elusive yet forever ubiquitous element of life called HOPE.

Just as we turn away from what may be one of the most challenging years any of us will ever experience, we turn towards an entirely new year with a little less confidence. After all, last New Year’s Eve, the only pressing matter of the coming New Year was what was looking to become a contentious election season. Oh, little did we know what we had in store for us when we blithely watched the calendar flip over to 2020. It’s hard to trust 2021, isn’t it?

For good reason. We knew the transition was going to be difficult, but most of us…myself included…never dreamed we’d be here at this point and still wondering. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. This isn’t how its ever gone in my lifetime. I’d love to experience a little normalcy. We didn’t know there was going to be a pandemic that would rage out of control. We didn’t know 2020 would be the year of social unrest that it was. It would be one thing if everything was settled and packaged up and resolved, but it’s not. There’s a LOT of work to be done before we ever get to that true sense of peace, I think.

That doesn’t mean we are without hope. There are more people trying to raise people up than those trying to break them down, I think. We just hear about the bad stuff more often because it sells. There are good people out there doing good work and making positive changes in our world. But, even more importantly, the things of this earth are finite and will eventually fall away. God has the entire universe in the palm of his hand and only He knows the Master Plan because He wrote it.

As I wandered around the internet last night, I was looking for hopeful things. Sesame Street has created Rohingya Muppets to help children cope with the unthinkable horrors of the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh. UPS Drivers are being celebrated and thanked for never giving up through the holiday rush. The vaccines are coming to a site near you and we can get on board and get this thing over with. The first meteor shower of 2021 is this weekend.

We can always look up for hope. When I was going through a difficult divorce, I built my very first house I ever lived in alone. It was exactly as I wanted it…light and airy with lots of florals and stripes. I was surrounded by my antiques and family treasures. And I had a hot tub out back. On the darkest, coldest nights of the year, I would turn off all the lights, quietly step out the back door, hang my robe on the hook and slip into the hot and steamy water. I live away from town and the night sky was magnificent. I remember leaning back in the hot water and staring up at the billions of stars. 

The constellation Orion always caught my eye with the three stars representing his belt. Orion was always there…looking over me and my house from his celestial perch in the late autumn and winter skies. As I was searching for an image to go with this post, I stumbled upon the lates images from NASA as they created a composite image of the Orion Nebula as seen by the Hubble Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. I think they saved the best for the last of 2020…as if to say “Here, I know it’s been hard. But let’s look forward with new hope.” 

Because…that same power that blew this cosmic fairy dust across the universe blew life into our souls. I’ll never look at Orion’s Belt the same again. Remember…it is often the unseen things that have the strongest power and give us the greatest hope.

?

“The heavens keep telling the wonders of God, and the skies declare what he has done. Each day informs the following day; each night announces to the next. They don’t speak a word, and there is never the sound of a voice. Yet their message reaches all the earth, and it travels around the world. In the heavens a tent is set up for the sun. It rises like a bridegroom and gets ready like a hero eager to run a race. It travels all the way across the sky. Nothing hides from its heat.”

Psalms 19:1-6 CEV