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A Definition-Poem by Melissa Weaver


A Definition
by Melissa Weaver

Hope is not something seen skin-deep.
It’s not happiness.  It’s not ignorance.  It’s not naïve.
Hope is not
some girl skipping through a daisy field.  Daisies die, you see.
It’s an eyes-open concept.

Hope sees,
opens eyes to
the death
the ashes
it’s surrounded by.

It stumbles through the blazing, thirsty desert
knowing the taste of water will come soon
It sees the moon in the night,
waits for the drip from the midnight faucet,
the tap that means freedom.

Hope is not
feeling,
but it’s not
just knowing either.

Hope is a God.
A great, holy, awe-inspiring God.
But Hope is also
an odd, stooped figure with a washrag
scrubbing some guy’s feet.

It is both a death and a life.
It is The Way.
It is a splintery, blood-stained, cracked cross.
It is a broken-open, light-bursting, night-smashing,
empty tomb.
It’s an angel explaining
why a man dead for 3 days
now suddenly isn’t where he should be.

You see,
Hope is a Person.
Hope is Christ.
The Living One, The Living Light. The Living Song.

They say that Love is a verb,
but I say that
Hope is, too.
Hope is a verb: Choice:
a choice to trust that Good wins
though Evil grins in its face.
That it might take years
to break free, to see,
but that sometimes,
sometimes it
just takes 3 days

for the Phoenix-Man
to rise from his own ashes.
Sometimes it’s just smashing
through voices that scream
we will never rise from ours.

Hope is a choice to worship
Now
in our deserts, in our ashes
Now.
Hope refuses to ignore pain
but chooses
to gain balance by leaning
by clinging to his phoenix wings
to just keep flying through it,
Hope is keeping our
eyes open in the pit.

Though our throats burn
are parched with ash,
are raw from the impact of an all-too-recent crash,
Hope is a choice to sing,
sing like Sam in the spider’s lair,
sing like Paul and Silas without a prayer
in some ancient jail,
knowing if He doesn’t bail
us out now, he will.

Hope keeps on singing till our lungs strain—
knowing that we have nothing to lose
and everything to gain in Him:
our Highest Hope, who
sings above
sings below
sings behind
sings before us,
sings for us,
and
resonates with the
refrain of
Rescue
over us.

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