A Haunting Hope

How can we hold onto hope when we are haunted by the past? Choose your haunting. The year 2020 alone provides plenty of personal, national, and global hauntings to choose from.

Is it the carefully tended to death of your elderly loved one under the care of hospice that haunts you?

Is it the horrifically shocking death of a sixteen year old family member that haunts you?

Is it the cries, wails, and pounding, the smashing and crashing in the streets that haunts you?

Is it the silent fear-shaped virus flying through the air, too small to see, yet too powerful to stop that haunts you?

Is it the one thing you had worked so hard for but now is a pile of ashes blowing away in the wind that haunts you?

Is it the child hiding under the blanket insisting she’s going to stay underneath it until it’s all over that haunts you?

Is it the calendar’s mocking glare as all you dreamed and planned for gets cancelled that haunts you?

Is it your own tired soul that tries to slip away during the lonely night that haunts you?

All of the haunting is held in hope. Do you believe this is possible?

Is it possible to be haunted and hopeful, too?

If we could go back in time, we would tell the children to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

What happens when it’s the worst that prepares us?

When there’s nothing left but the haunting, we are prepared for hope.

The year 2020 has prepared us well.

God, haunt the dreams of your people with hope.