A few weeks ago, whilst buying birthday cards, my eyes alighted on a most beautiful artistic card with one of my most favourite quotes on its cover. The timeless poet Emily Dickinson writing of the nature of hope:

““Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all – "

I bought the card, and it sits enclosed in a little frame on my office desk. It is a timeless reminder of what resurrection means to me, and the reminder that I belong in, and am bound to a community of ‘Easter people’ that stretches across the globe.

With all that is happening in the world around us, I for one need these simple but profound reminders that I belong to something bigger than myself; that I belong to a community of faith that has hope at its core. In my belonging, I am by faith’s necessity, called in the words of Colin Gibson’s hymn, ‘for the hope to go on I must make it my song, you and I be the singers.’

I live with the ongoing presence of depression and anxiety disorder. It has been with me for much of my life as a steady companion. Over time, I have learnt the importance of, in the late Jim Cotter’s words in his invaluable Prayers for the Night, to “befriend the flora and fauna of the night,” to befriend their presence as companions who make up the very sacred texture of my being. They do not diminish, or enhance, they are simply part of my ground of being. I have come to respect their presence and have learnt, mostly well, how to dwell with them, draw wisdom and understanding from them as to their distinctive contours and makeup.

The Psalmist, writing in Psalm 139 with such exquisite form, rings so true in the poetic declaration that even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. The wisdom imbedded in both the darkness and the light are inextricably bound together in a life-giving unity.

Therein, in the holding together of darkness and light lies the essence of hope which I have come to know as nothing less than the divine spark – the divine yes to life – the creative pulse of God, the source and being of hope. In ‘spite of’, ‘regardless of, it ‘perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all’.

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!

I try to count them – they are more than the sand; I come to the end – I am still with you (Psalm 139: 17-18).