HOPE

LETTER FROM MY FRIEND ROBERT SMITH, DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT, UNITED METHODIST CHURCH CONFERENCE IN NEW JERSEY

  "A colleague was asking me why I could remain so optimistic in the face of such difficult challenges for the church and the world around us.  I simply responded as I have throughout my life that I am filled with hope, an almost naive hope, a hope that sees beyond the evidence, that visualizes peace, the shalom kind of peace, that is just the right blend of holiness and wholeness. 

And just as I was thinking that I must be crazy to hold on to this naive hope I read the poem you've read before I'm sure, "The Mystery of the Holy Innocents," by Charles Peguy: '"I am,'" God says, "'Master of the Three Virtues."'  Faith is a loyal wife.  Charity is a fervent mother.  But hope is a very little girl.  "'I am,"' God says, "'the Master of virtues."'  It is Faith who holds fast through century upon century.  It is Charity who gives herself through centuries of centuries.  But is my little hope who gets up every morning.  Says good-day to us...  "' I am,"' God says, "'the Lord of Virtues."'  It is Faith who resists through century upon century.  It is Charity who yields through century upon century.  But it is my little hope who every morning says good-day to us...   It is my little hope who goes to sleep every evening in her child's bed, after having said a good prayer, and who wakes every morning and gets up and says her prayers with new attention... 

You believe that children know nothing, and that parents and grown-up people know something.  Well, I tell you it is the contrary (It is always the contrary).  It is the parents, it is the grown up people who know nothing.  And it is the children who know Everything.  For they know first innocence, which is everything. '"The world is always inside out,"' God says.  '"And in the contrary sense, happy is he who remains like a child and who like a child keeps his first innocence."'   May we all be as innocent and as hopeful."
--Robert Smith