“Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.”— G. K. Chesterton 

Hope is formed in the darkness. We like our hope clean and well-lit. The kind that comes with a contract, or a guarantee from a reputable source, we want hope with a tracking number, or a scheduled delivery date. But real hope—the kind Scripture speaks of, the kind that held Mary in her bewilderment and Jesus in the tomb—is not tidy. Real hope is not born in clarity. Real hope begins when we do not know what comes next. Hope is, in fact, the courage to believe that God is doing something when we cannot see a thing.