Pastor's Page: Hope Springs Eternal
August 8 ,2010
The Meyers-Briggs indicator of personal preference and personality type, reveals that some of us are hardwired optimists and others biased toward the dark side as pessimists. Natural
optimists tend to be idealists, romantics, poets, and artists while the pessimistic have their feet on the ground, and are realistic in their perspective, and drawn to professions that are practical.
What is true of all human being is that we need something to look forward to a better
tomorrow. Our life’s journey is one of anticipation. We are always hoping against hope. We long to start going to school and eagerly hope to finish it and graduate. We dream about a
fulfilling job that will harness our energies and ignite our passion, and we yearn to accumulate a retirement nest egg and do whatever we want. We seek out the perfect mate and delightful
children, and a warm home environment and friendly neighbors and look forward to an empty house and short visits with the grandchildren and maybe an apartment or townhouse without the cares of ownership. When we retire from the workplace, it cannot be a retirement to nothing, but a retirement to new dreams, and goals to bring them alive.
We hope for some success, some degree of financial security for ourselves and perhaps a small inheritance to hand on to loved ones and the larger world. More importantly, we would like the love and the values we have worked hard to live, to continue even stronger in their hearts and consciences. We would like our children and grandchildren to be part of a better world after we have gone; a world where there is more peace and more justice than the one we knew. Perhaps we may even have shown them something of how life is to be lived; and one day how to die with trust in God.
The coming of Jesus into human history, the Word of God, confirms our deepest hopes and longings. Life is worth living. All that we have tried to accomplish will be caught up in the
eternity of God’s love. Although God is transcendent and shrouded in mystery, this God is also with us and within us. The shattering reality of the incarnation, the coming of God, has turned the world upside down. God’s love is manifest in a fragile child, who grew to maturity with wisdom and grace, letting us know more of who God is and what it means to live life to the full.
We may even discover at the end of our journey into something infinitely more, that by the grace of God we have advanced the reign of God, and heaven on earth.
Peace,
Father Bruce
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