Sunday Morning Meditation

Hope

It's a runt in the picture, a true medical case, a calf so small that his likelihood of survival on the ranch was tenuous at best. So my friend brought him from the range of hills behind him for special care. Amazing, but he looks happy. He's got a life. And there lies the story of the picture.

Don't know why, but it happens, I think, in most of our lives--and mine too. Hope is a fragile thing somehow. Maybe it's the proliferation of suffering around us; everywhere we look, people hurt. I'm quite sure that I feel it more and more with advancing years because I'm not a romantic about some golden age. Darkness--and sadness--eats away at spirit and life, as it has since Adam and Even stitched together some leafy togs. That these aren't the worst of times doesn't make us feel any less as if they are.

My morning dose of John Calvin comes from his thoughts on Psalm 11: "The Lord is in his holy temple." And what Calvin says is this: "When all things are thrown into disorder and darkness. . .let faith serve as a lamp to enable us to behold God's heavenly throne, and let that sight suffice to make us wait in patience for the restoration of things to a better state."

Thus, once again, I am reminded. Give me strength to squeeze these old hands around a promise that isn't news at all. This morning, once again, I'm thankful to be reminded that hope is always there, even for runts--and those who sadly think they are--for all of us who find it hard to live sometimes on the open range.