Keeping Sight of the Hope Made Invisible

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.”

~Francis Bacon.

Understanding why life presents as an existence requiring the virtue of hope to succeed is made simpler by merely understanding we need drive and motivation to get where we’re going. Indeed, it’s rather like God using these things to pull us along in life such that our purpose becomes our meaning for continuing.

Where we fall into trouble is when the mind’s eye no longer sees the land for the sea.

Then we’re all-at-sea. Doubts swing through the canopies of our minds and fear and anxious thoughts threaten to overwhelm us. And, still, there’s nothing wrong with the reminder of this. To be brought low in the fear of doubt every now and again is not such a bad thing.

The Golden Compass of the Soul

Hope is the golden compass of the soul. It refuses to buy into the doubt unless those doubts present to us new and truthful information with which we need to act on.

The greatest thing about experience (for the ‘experienced’) is it can always lead us to draw on the many times (possibly) when things have worked out for the best, even against trials and difficulties. And whilst many can’t claim sufficient experience, they can draw on others’ experience and find trustworthy advice if they look hard enough for it.

The practice of our faith melds with hope to produce within us a cheery perseverance. We can undergo tremendous difficulty out on this wild sea ‘adventure’ that we possibly do not want, but the action of faith that’s buoyed of hope will push us through it every time.

Trusting Invisibility

It’s a great skill of life to both see and trust that which is invisible, though never more real. This is often how the Spiritual realm of God subsists. God’s plans—which are revealed gradually to us, yet are also known in an eternal realm of past, present and future combined—are spiritually divined, and in the same way impossible to know.

Still, we must best trust that things will work out.

For many people this is not an easy thing learned and perhaps it’s best seen as a patience with ourselves and our God in the midst of our world. We don’t, then, readily miss sight of land even though we can only see water, and miles and miles of it.

Indeed, the mere fact that all we see is water propounds the magnificence and glory of the impending land when we actually do grasp sight of it. It makes the victory of reaching dry land all the sweeter.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.