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Hope is essential for life. Its opposite, hopelessness can quickly drain all our energy and make life seem very difficult. The 27 word in my Lent lexicon is: HOPE. Hope is essential for life. Its opposite, hopelessness can quickly drain all our energy and make life seem very difficult. It\u2019s relatively easy to be hopeful when life is going well. When we feel secure in our personal lives and when our societies seem prosperous and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,494,239,271,336,246],"tags":[28,18,53,223,83,6,166,8,33,229,13,41,29,15,19,24,10],"class_list":["post-3725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-benedictine-spirituality","category-christ","category-gospel","category-lectio-divina","category-lent","category-scripture","tag-benedictine","tag-challenge","tag-christ","tag-christlike","tag-faith","tag-gospel","tag-holyspirit","tag-hope","tag-kingdom","tag-kingdomvalues","tag-lectiodivina","tag-lent","tag-love","tag-newlife","tag-romans","tag-stpaul","tag-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3725"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3730,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725\/revisions\/3730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
It\u2019s relatively easy to be hopeful when life is going well. When we feel secure in our personal lives and when our societies seem prosperous and stable. At those times hope seems the obvious choice and doesn\u2019t require much effort.
When life gets more challenging it\u2019s much harder to be hopeful. When we see suffering, misunderstanding and even cruelty in every direction hope can begin to feel impossible and pointless. The same applies when we\u2019re offered false hope, promises that we know in our hearts won\u2019t stand the test of time and become reality. In his letter to the Romans St Paul gives us a reason to hope that will stand up whatever we face:
\u201cHope does not disappoint, since the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.\u201d<\/em>
Writing in his own challenging times St Paul could see that the real source of hope is the love of God holding us in being however challenging our times are.
Today\u2019s gospel takes up this message. Desperate as the court official is at his sons\u2019 illness he\u2019s able to glean enough hope in the hard situation to ask for Jesus\u2019 help and to believe it when Jesus tells him his son will live:
\u201cThe man believed what Jesus had said\u2026\u201d<\/em>
In our own challenging times we too can rely on the hope that God offers us will sustain us and support us whatever we\u2019re compelled to face.
Where is Christ offering you hope this Lent?
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