The Daily Pearl
On Hope
A pearl kept from the brand’s mornings: a verse to hold, a prayer to say and a word to carry.
“Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.”
Hebrews 6 : 19
A Prayer for This Morning
Lord, when the surface of my life is all weather, remind me that hope is not a mood but a mooring. Anchor me where the water is still. Hold me steadfast until the sky clears, and even if it does not.
Affirmation
My hope is not a forecast; it is an anchor, and it holds.
The Reflection
Scripture's image for hope is deliberately unglamorous. Not a sunrise, not a wing: an anchor, the heaviest and least visible object on the ship. Hope, the writer to the Hebrews insists, is not optimism, which lives on deck and checks the sky. It is tackle. It does its work out of sight, below the waterline, fastened to something the waves cannot reach.
This matters on the days when a woman cannot feel hopeful, and there are such days. An anchor's holding power was never a function of the crew's emotions. Sure and steadfast describes the mooring, not the sailor. The question in rough water is not how do I feel but where am I fastened; and the second question, unlike the first, can have a settled answer.
In Her Company
St Monica
She prayed seventeen years for her son Augustine, and lived to see him become one of the great saints of the Church. Hope, in her keeping, simply refused the calendar.
Monica was born in North Africa in 331 and married young into a difficult household. For seventeen years she prayed for the conversion of her brilliant, wayward son. She lived to see Augustine baptised at Milan in 387 and died at Ostia on the journey home, at peace. Her son became one of the greatest teachers the Church has known.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
The Wardrobe