Hope On The Installment Plan

Hope without action is just wishful thinking.

The action can be physical, putting your heart into a future through the work of your hands. A new garden, a book you're writing, a home improvement. For me, it's building a small aeroplane (not a model, one I can fly).

Or it can be mental. There's the story of an American pilot who was shot down over North Viet Nam, and kept in awful conditions, in solitary confinement.

He could have surrendered to despair. Instead, he built his dream house...in his head. He drew up the plans, dug the foundations, built the walls, did the electrical and plumbing work...and did not let up, even for a day.

When released in 1973, he went home...and built that house.

You can't let cancer leave you sour;

you can find hope, you can!

But its bill comes due every hour

on God's installment plan.

It would be nice were it an app

to download to your brain,

but thinking like that is a trap

for it won't long remain

without the work that you put in

each and every day.

If you really want to win,

this is the only way,

to pay in effort every cost

that keeps your hope from being lost.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is SCARED.

Don't be scared to be afraid,

don't be afraid of shaking knees,

for that's the way that life is made,

and if you do not freeze

you'll find you, trembling, can go on

through things you thought you could not face;

you'll find that when all hope is gone

it leaves a kind of grace

that is the province of the lost 

who cannot hope for safety,

and who no longer count the cost

and learn a rawboned gaiety 

that leaves them dancing in the night,

shining with an inner light.

Syl finds hope in the existence of ice cream.