We do not have to sit around immobilized, waiting for help to come. We can learn to care for our society. If our streets are to be redeemed we will have to commit our own human and financial resources to that goal. We will have to recover our gifts of faith and hope and endurance, evoke the gifts of other persons, and thus develop leaders and facilitators for the building of a global network of small, disciplined, self-critical groups whose reflection will issue in purposeful action. This is a way to join in the liberation movement that is going on in all the poor countries of the world. We are not the initiators of this movement. Even the suffering ones of the earth are not the initiators, though they are the genuine leaders. The movement is God’s.
– Elizabeth O’Connor, Source: Servant Leaders Servant Structures
Palm Sunday Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
Jesus did not have a pessimistic view of the world. He did not propose asceticism or withdrawal, or demand an “ethic of absolutes” impossible to practice in real life. Rather, he described behavior governed by the love of God and demonstrated its possibility in the world.
– Andre Trocme, Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution
The hummingbird, like the swallow, trusts in providence.
Providence is the faith that nothing can prevent us from fulfilling the ultimate meaning of our existence. Providence does not mean a divine planning by which everything is predetermined, as is an efficient machine. Rather, Providence means that there is a creative and saving possibility implied in every situation, which cannot be destroyed by any event.
What kind of hope and vision were necessary to see this through?
Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
– Dale Carnegie
One can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope”
–Source Unknown
Art – an expression of love, and an expression of hope
Today’s Gospel story, on this 5th Sunday of Lent, is the raising of Lazarus from the dead. We are reminded, then, to hope when our situation looks bleakest.
True love is embodied in expectancy, an eagerness to love God now as a preparation for God’s Kingdom. Our ultimate hopes are expressed by whom and what and how we now love…. True love is embodied in the act of giving and forgiving, without stint or stipulations, without anxiety or compulsion. The forgiven is not made dependent upon the giver, but upon a free un-coerced love.
– Paul S. Minear, Source: The Kingdom and the Power
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