Hope

I just read a phrase I really like.  It said “overflow in hope.”  It seems to me that hope is a pretty rare commodity at the moment.  All sorts of statistics are being quoted.  “Worst case scenario.”  My world is getting smaller and smaller.
There is no doubt we will emerge from this.  It also seems we are learning some things which hopefully will stand us in good stead in the future.  In the meantime, the distance between us physically is growing and growing.  Still, I reckon we do what we gotta do, and follow the advice of those in the know.
I guess I relate to the term overflow in hope because of a bowl we have in the front yard.  It is made to look like an old-world thing, and is for keeping water plants in.  We do have plants in there and at the right time they flower and look spectacular.  Now is not that time.  The biggest thing they have going for them at the moment is they are green and alive.
Every now and then we need to fill it with water.  Our custom is to leave the hose in there and add water.  Occasionally when we return to it, it has filled to overflowing.  There is more than enough.  Not only are the plants in the container happy, but the plants that surround the container are happy.
The same really goes for our bird bath.  Sometimes it needs cleaning.  Well, we think it does anyway.  The birds really seem like they could not care less.  As long as it is wet.  We use a solid spurt of water to clean it and then refill it.  We know it is full when it overflows.  Again, those plants around the bird bath enjoy the overflow.
Right now, what seems to be overflowing is pessimism.  One only needs to look at the supermarket shelves to see that.  Merril was driving around looking for toilet paper yesterday for a public place.  Normally it is available.  When she phoned her words were “I’m on a mission from God.”  Well it turns out the mission is still going.  I guess Martin Luther King Jr. did not have toilet paper in mind when he said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
I need to take adequate precautions and follow the right advise, but there is one thing that dire circumstances cannot take from me, and that is hope.  I don’t know what the future holds, but thankfully I know who holds the future.  What has become very real to me right now is that the darker it is, the brighter the light shines.  Thankfully it is not a “by the skin of my teeth” thing.  Not a maybe but a definite.  Overflowing seems to sum it up.
As Napoleon Bonaparte so eloquently said, “Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.”  In this day of the virus and unpleasant possibilities, hope, not fear, nourishes me.