Me n' the boys...

Once in a while your dreams do come true...

My whole life I dreamed of having two boys.  Dreamed of taking them with me to watch pro-football games.  Dreamed that they'd love it, love me, love each other.

That would be Daddy and Sammie (front) and Jordie (back) at the Argos/B.C Lions game this past friday.  

See?

There is hope.

Once in a while you have a day that's pure and good and glorious and wonderful in and of itself. It leaves nothing to be desired, leaves no stone unturned, it fair sparkles in its perfect happiness.

That was my Friday.

And that's the thing for you to keep in mind today, friend reader.  Sometimes dreams come true.  Sometimes.  And that 'sometimes' is the reason we keep getting out of bed every day.  We know, deep in the core of us, that though today might be grey and lonely and tough, 'tomorrow' is coming.  

I know that can sound corny and Disney-fied.  I get that.  The thing is, if the hope of a brighter tomorrow sounds that way to you, my fear is that you've become embittered and jaded.  And the 'you' I'm referring to is, of course, me.  I find there's a need to keep checking and re-checking my soul/inner compass for weeds and darkness.

Seems to me you can choose to live a life that's hopeless or a life that's hopeful.  It's almost like there really are two sides to the coin when it comes to a worldview.

So many of the people I meet in the arts and in professional ministry come across as deeply jaded and embittered.  I understand why.  Maybe your life/career has beat you down to the point that you've all but lost your joy, all but relinquished your right to hope for a brighter day someday in the future.

Life is like that.

Thing is you're not just a human/animal.  Regardless of what you believe about life/God/the universe I would hazard to guess that even on your darkest days you can spot the difference between us and a polar bear, us and a horse, us and a silverback.  

There's a sparkle in the eye of the human that says it knows, deep down at the core of it, that there is a future worth living for, that all is not lost, that hope does--in fact--spring eternal, that sense will be made of this mess sooner or later.

That dreams do, in fact and after all, come true.

Someday, somewhere...

It's been said that three things remain at the end of it all and those three are faith (the stubborn belief in something 'more' beyond the unseen...) hope (natch) and love.  In it's original context we're told the greatest of these is love and none of us would dispute that, but for today, the most needfully memorable of these is...

Hope.

Springing eternal, flashing like sunrise, blazing like fire, booming like thunder, across centuries, galaxies, relational divides, making your stories soar and your sermons worth the paper they're written on, turning your job from mundane into magical, making your wife a princess, a lover, a dancer, a mother, a girlfriend, an icon, turning your kids into princes and princesses, heirs of a kingdom that is here and not yet, recipients of your love, of your largesse of a piece a pizza and an ice cream cone and two tickets to the game.

Hope.

Write your stories with it and lace your sermons with it and live your average everyday life by it...

And you just might be alright.

T