Public Service Announcement

Where Flowers bloom so does hope. – Lady Bird Johnson 

We have emerged from the cold winter into the spring of new life. The weather is still trying to decide if we deserve it by pushing us around with wind, rain and tornados but it won’t keep us from the warm, beautiful days ahead for much longer. The flowers will bloom, even if they are flooded with rain and thrashed with the storms. As Lady Bird says, hope will bloom with the flowers. The question is: what will we do with it?  

“Hope sleeps in our bones like a bear waiting for spring to rise and walk.” – Marge Piercy 

If hope sleeps in my bones, I suspect it’s as lazy as I am. I’m a really good sleeper, napper and all-around dozer-offer. The poet captures the true nature of hope, in that we have to wake up and make use of it if it’s to do us any good. It’s latent, dormant and asleep until that moment we wake up and smell the roses. Then we have to act upon it. Hope does us no good if it’s just used as a comforting emotion to lull us back to sleep. We have to shake off our hibernation and get on with it. I’m guilty of doing just that. I’ve found myself waking up and going about my day with altogether too much automation, never acting on the hope that “sleeps in (my) bones”. I leave it in there to lie dormant, as I go to work and seem to never get around to doing the things that would bring my hopes to life. Hope is more than that. The reality is that hope should be our firm foundation that we build things on. Like relationships, careers, and dreams of a better life.  

Hebrews 11:1  

“Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” 

If you want to know how to get to the things you hope for (if they’re worth having in your life at all) you need faith. In God first. In yourself next. It’s okay to have faith in yourself, just don’t trust yourself more than the Big Guy Upstairs. He’s equipped us with all the tools to get to where we need to go, and we should trust that He’s in control. We really can do amazing things if we just have faith to get to the things we hope for. Things hoped for need to be the good things, too. Don’t treat it like a genie in a bottle and turn the whole thing into wishes. It don’t work like that.  

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.” – Leo Tolstoy 

Get off your duff and make a plan. Do something you’ve always “hoped” to do. Stop waiting to do the “Big Thing” you’ve always wanted to do, or all the “Little Things” you’ve always dreamed of being a part of your life. Rise and walk out of hibernation and go “Do”. Nobody is stopping you. Nobody but you.  

This has been a Public Service Announcement to Myself. If any of you get any motivation from it, it’s entirely accidental. You’re welcome. 

God bless Y’all!