Is there is a light that never goes out?

Is hope real?

What’s the point in hoping?

I am alone in my room and I lie in bed in a baggy t shirt soft with wear and potent with the smell of sleep. It is deceptive. I do not sleep.

I don’t want to move. I feel I cannot. I am unable to see beyond today; right now, and now is pretty bleak. It is the 1^st of January 2012. It is New Year’s Day and the associations of this fill me with an almost amused hopelessness.

I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what’s going on in my head. I have become increasingly unfamiliar with my own thoughts. They grow more and more absurd. Despite this, I cannot perceive, or haven’t the strength to find, a route out of my troubled mind.

I plan the only version of escape I believe is possible. I surround myself with agents of several, uncompleted getaway strategies. At the same time I lack the balls to follow through. The knowledge of this drives my self-perspective into even more twisted depths. Weeks of plunging follow.

As time and my sanity continue to tumble, something enters. It is small, it is gentle. It glimpses through the blinds I can’t seem to open. It takes time.

A tiny jump in my heart lets me paint. As it hurts I paint. I can use black ink only. But still I am able to move.

As time tumbles I begin to walk. One morning I stand still surrounded by trees and silence and I am able to smell the greenery surrounding me. I weep and a part of me begins to achingly but astonishingly come to life.

Seemingly like magic, colour appears in my paintings. There are dark sketchy lines, but there is soft colour.

And suddenly an identity is given to the energy. The knowledge comes from nowhere. And it comes from Everywhere.

Out of the blue as my heart tenderly, painfully fills with lifeblood; I cry out. ‘Saviour’.

Hope is gentle. There is no enforcement. It takes its time. I decided to believe in it and it saved my life.

If there’s one thing I know to be true it is the authenticity of hope. It is not naïve. It isn't unrealistic. Assuming it to be so only makes us fools of the dark. Its presence is only experienced after seeing bleakness and witnessing things light up.

The nature of God is seen in the things that transform us. I believe that not only is hope a God given gift but it is a revelation of God himself. Hope is the transformational power of the Holy Spirit. We have already been given that gift if only we awaken it. Like anything with God it is powerful, enlivening and sensational. Like anything with God it is quiet and unassuming until we choose to take it.

Choose Hope.