Faith and Hope

Happy New Year!!!  The beginning of a new year is always so exciting to me.  It represents an idea of a  fresh start and new opportunity to grow and learn.  As I am typing this, I think, each new day brings these things as well.  However, I guess it's the fact that the New Year only comes around every 365 days that makes it different and exciting.  

There is a great movie called, "Amazing Grace".  The movie claims to be based on a true story.  I"m not sure how much license the script writer took, but it is basically the story of a man who, through his faith and the guidance of his childhood pastor, orchestrated the collapse of the British Slave trade in the 1800's.  Throughout the movie, the main character (who is a member of the British Parliament ) seeks advice and counsel from his childhood Pastor who, at the end of his life, is living a life of repentance for having  participated in the slave trade as a captain on a slave ship.  I love how every time the main character ( I forget his name) visits the Pastor, the Pastor is engaged in some type of humbling  work such as mopping the floors of a massive church.   Oh!  I neglected to mention that this Pastor is believed to have written the hymn, "Amazing Grace", hence the name of the movie.

Anyway, I digress, my favorite scene and the point I am trying to make comes toward the end of the film when the Pastor is visited one last time.  He is blind and the conversation goes something like this, "You are blind." states the main characters.  To which the Pastor replies, "Yes, God decided that I had seen all that I needed to see" and proceeded about his work without another thought.   The faith and hope in that statement is astounding.  The peace deserves a mention as well.

Last year, I felt strongly called to pray for Peace and Joy for the entire year.  Or should I say, I had a strong desire in my heart for peace and joy and spent all year praying for those fruits.  Although I tasted peace and joy many times throughout this year, the possession of peace and joy deep in my soul still escapes me.  This has been a year of tremendous grace and growing, but not without tremendous struggle.  Praise God!!  How else would we know that we are growing if not for the struggles.

Since September, the idea of "growing in virtues" and in particularly the Theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Love have come across my path, at least weekly and culminated at Christmas when they were the common thread woven through 3 different books I have been reading during Advent and Christmas: Interior Freedom by Jacques Phillippe, The Diary of Elizabeth Lesur, and Lesson in Love by Anne, a lay apostle.

What I am learning is that peace and joy are the fruits of  Faith and Hope.  WHAT!?!?   It has been 16 years since Jesus pulled me out of a life of emptiness and  touched my heart with a love and acceptance I had never known and I have never been the same.  I have voraciously sought Jesus and continue to study and learn more about my faith.  I have the hope of heaven and believe in the promises of God and eternal life with Him.  How could I not have enough faith and hope?   Jesus is teaching me that there is a level of faith and hope from which comes that peace and joy that surpasses all understanding.  There is a faith and hope that transforms the depths of your very soul.  There is a faith and hope that, when faced with blindness, one peacefully trusts that "God decided I have seen all I needed to see"  and continues to go about the business of God's work and not plunge into despair.  That's the kind of faith and hope that brings true peace and joy, not the peace and joy that is fleeting, but deep and transforming.  It doesn't make my kids miraculously obedient, wonderful children or my husband "get me", or people accept me, but it transforms ME so that my peace is rooted in something other than what is going on all around me or other people.  It is rooted in my heart and my knowledge that Jesus is truly there and no one or nothing can take that away.

I'm also learning that to get there requires spending time with Jesus in that place in my heart.  Life today is so busy, but I am learning that this is the most important thing in life.  Anne writes in Lessons in Love, "I know that existing in the contempletive reality is our goal" and "Jesus desires personal transformation to be our highest priority."  I've got to stop making excuses and I've got to let go and let Him transform me into a new creation.

Prayer to ask for the virtue of Hope by Elisabeth Leseur

My God, who hast allowed us human hopes, but who alone bestowest Christian and supernatural hope, grant, I beseech Thee, by Thy grace, this virtue to my soul, to the souls of all I love, and to all Christian soul.

Let it enlighten and transform our lives, our suffering, and even our death, and let it uphold in us, through the disappointment and sadness of each day, an inner strength and unalterable serenity.