THOM TURNER

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If this is your first time here, welcome! I'm on sabbatical for the month of May, but I have guest posts scheduled in my absence. Enjoy them and hope you'll check out the archives as well!

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Thom writes over at Everyday Liturgy, which is one of my favorite places to visit for, you guessed it, everyday liturgy. He teaches English at Nyack College and is the Senior Editor of Generate Magazine. He also writes for The Curator, The Englewood Review of Books and The Other Journal. I have loved reading everything I've read on his blog and sometimes his short morning liturgies stop me enough to help me coast for the rest of the day on his insights. 


Hope is circular.

It comes in waves, and then recedes back to the ocean. When it leaves, I am left wet—cold and shaking—not knowing what to do next. I start to hope for hope, that like high tide it will come again and wash over me. And maybe the next time it will stay, and I will float in the gentle bob of the current, and let hope take me where it wills.

But I have never had hope hang around like that. It always pulls away and leaves me at low tide.

Faith is the evidence of things unseen and love is the greatest of these, but what is hope a sign of? St. Paul wrote that character creates hope, but he stops there. Tell me Paul, what is the product of hope?

There is a trinity of actions Paul prescribes to us—faith, hope and love—and they each have their role to play. Hope, I feel, is the most fickle of them, always supported by faith or love. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and love always hopes, so in the end hope is built on a foundation of faith and love.

I long to always be hopeful, to see the bright side of things, to be constantly cheerful, joyful, fun-loving and gregarious. To be hopeful no matter my place in life or circumstance. I always feel hope fail my grasp like sand running through my fingers, and then wonder how do I hold onto something that constantly shifts. How do I sustain hope?

I can start turning back to the foundations of faith and love. If hope fails let me have faith. If faith and hope both fail me, then let me continue to love until faith finds its way back to me and hope follows with it. Only then will the waves of hope come crashing back, and I can find my home in the warmth of living waters.