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Photo by Tommy van Kessel on Unsplash

Running low on hope these days?

You’re in good company, friend.

For many of us, it’s been a tall order to try and fend off the discouragement that seems unrelenting right now; too much bad news for our battered minds to contain, too much sadness for us to bear. Sleep and rest have been hard to come by. Joy seems in short supply. I get it.

If your eyes are tired from scanning the horizon, straining to see something good off in the distance, in the face of all this not-so-goodness in front of you, do me a favor today: take a look in the mirror.

Are you grieving?
Are you brokenhearted?
Are you pissed off?
Are you at the end of your rope?

Good.

This is cause for celebration.

It is a sign that your heart is still working. It is your soul’s alarm, telling you that things are not okay and that you have cause to be not okay, too. It’s also confirmation of your abiding goodness, that superhuman ability to suffer greatly and still give a damn, and it is reason to be hopeful today.

Physical pain lets us know when our bodies have been damaged. Similarly, despair tells us when our hearts have incurred injury. Both are uncomfortable but necessary prompts to protect us from further damage. They demand a redemptive response of movement. These days demand one too.

Friend, what I’m saying is that right now, everything in you that is so bruised and so tender and so broken, is also the most powerful weapon on the planet. This is the catalytic fuel of revolution. These tears and sighs are the glowing embers out of which a Phoenix will rise in glory reborn.

In days when things seem to make no sense, when darkness seems to have the upper hand, when we’re overwhelmed by the prevalent wrong in our midst, we often lose hope because we wonder where the good people have gone.

This is a reminder that they haven’t gone anywhere.

Here you are.

So yes, you’re exhausted and you’re exasperated and you’re pushed to the brink, but you’re also right where you need to be to do what is needed now. You’re perfectly positioned to make a bold, defiant declaration of love in these days. You have everything you need to begin altering the planet without delay.

You’re also not alone.

One of the lies hopelessness tells us is that we are the only ones who are not okay with this; that you are a solitary warrior and that surrender isn’t only necessary and sensible, but inevitable. Refuse to believe this. It’s bullsh*t from hell’s PR department. It’s the worst kind of fake news.

As you read or hear these very words, millions and millions of good people are also similarly discouraged and wounded, convinced no one cares as much as they do that everything’s gone sideways. They do. I can promise you that. I hear from them all the time.

You need to get about the work of finding all those other noble, determined, grief-battered souls, and fashioning a response to everything that is not right in these days—and you will. And when you do, you need to use your gifts and hands and voices to speak into the not all rightness and make it more right.

But for now, the victory is simply in seeing that yes, good people still inhabit this place, and that you are one of them—and that is where the hope is.

Take a look in the mirror, friend.

See the grief on your face.

Feel the full depth of your sadness, and be encouraged today.

Hear your heartbeat and know—hope is still alive.