HOPE Chests

For your consideration……

Today’s message came in on a memory. When I was growing up, there were three of us cousins the same age. One cousin, Sue, was a tomboy. My other cousin, Diane, was girly girl and I was in between. One weekend we were up north visiting. I was about 12. Diane brought me out a gift. We really didn’t exchange gifts so I was surprised. I was even more surprised when I opened it and it was a set of nesting pyrex mixing bowls. She told me she thought that we could start exchanging Christmas and birthday gifts for our HOPE chests. I had no idea what a HOPE chest was. She explained that is a chest where we collected and made things for when we would ultimately get married. To Diane, that was her ultimate dream.She could not wait to get married and have a family which she did as soon as she graduated from high school despite her parents urging to wait and go to college first. Sadly, Diane died in a car accident when we were in our mid 20’s. Not so sad is that she knew her ultimate HOPEs and dreams, did not waver from them and lived them.

Today’s message is about having HOPEs and dreams and hanging on to them. It is about keeping them in a safe place. It is about collecting those things along the way that we need to ultimately fulfill them.

Our HOPEs and dreams are for the physical and non-physical and almost always are a combination of both. Do we have to have a physical HOPE chest? Certainly not but it does help us mere mortals when we can visualize. It does help us when we commit to paper our thoughts, HOPEs and dreams.

Today we are asked to recommit to our HOPEs and dreams. We are being asked to start our HOPE chest if we do not already have one. Be creative. It does not have to be a HOPE chest in the traditional sense. It can be a small box. It can be a box you decorate. It doesn’t even have to be a box. It can be a vision board. It can be a special drawer. It can be a bowl. It does not matter what it is. What matters is that it is a place that you commit to visiting and interacting with daily if not several times a day. It is all about the intention of fulfilling our HOPEs and dreams.

That is the HOPE. And so it is.

Bit by bit, piece by piece, HOPE by HOPE action steps anyone can take…..

-Meditate/pray…..bring into focus those HOPEs and dreams.

-Drink lots of water.

-Get outdoors and take in at least 10 deep breaths.

-Create a HOPE chest.

What made me smile yesterday…..-

-A magnificent thunder-storm that lit up the night and shook the ground.

-A gorgeous day.

-Fabulous students.

-I finished a book.

-Went to bed early.

-Jackie….my sounding board.

Love, Blessings and Gratitude,

Rev. Chris