Hope without expectation

Last insight from Remaking, but this one from Liz. She just tossed it off as part of a story, but it struck me (as a lot of her wisdom does) that I want that! I want that depth and yet simplicity, that fully integrated owning of the truth and owning of the self. She must be one of the most “authentic” people I know – I hate to think of how much she must have had to go through to get there. No spiritual insights are easy, but suffering gives a depth and compassion to insight which is not attainable any other way (as far as I know) and Liz has so much compassion I shudder to think how much suffering she had to walk through to get it.

“Hope without expectation”

That’s it – isn’t it wonderful? To pray, to ask God, to continue in hope and yet without expectation of a specific answer. To leave the situation open for God to work without suggestions and pressure as to how He might like to do it. To continue in hope when all hope seems lost – oh, yes, I know that one. To cling stubbornly to the hope of heaven when there is no earthly reason. Unreasonable hope which continues in the face of reasons to stop. Hope, the only antidote to despair. That’s the sort of hope which withstands the fiery furnace, lions, the valley of the shadow, years of silence. That’s the kind of hope I need – more than twelve years now it has been, so what reason do I have to hope? And yet…