You wonder where hope lives, and this is natural.

Shootings… division… strife…

William Butler Yeats said in a famous poem, “The center cannot hold,” and you feel that in this season.

On one side, a brave public face. On another side fear, anger and insecurity as both the left and right forget how to treat each other as human beings.

Where does hope live?

You want to keep away from the news, but still the news always seems to find you.

Where does hope live?

Maybe hope lives in the surrender of hope. 

Think about Jesus, and his very central invitation—call and command, even—to take up the cross (yours, or his, depending on the gospel).

Remember that the cross was not a symbol of hope.

It was a symbol of death.

But what Jesus (and all of life, really) is trying to teach you is that embracing the reality of surrender, loss of control even unto death is actually the place where you find hope.

If for nothing else than that’s the place you surrender and lay down all expectations of anything else, and you are content to be present to the moment, and find that right there is the place where God is, and where to breathe—to merely be alive—is to have everything in the universe available and to you.