Hope. It’s a new year and new year’s always inspire hope for the future. It does sound a bit like wishing for world peace, but hope is alive and well, if we dare to believe. I have so much to hope for. I have personal hopes and hopes for other people. I have hopes based on promises from God and hopes I want Him to touch.

When I think of those hopes, it makes me think of dancing. Not just dancing, dancing, but ballet. I remember, back in the day, when I took ballet. The teacher would say, “You have a string tied to your wrist. At the other end of the string is a balloon, lifting your wrist light as air.” We would move our arms through first, second, third and fourth positions, trying very hard to have balloons tied to our wrists. Ninety-nine per cent of the time we were tied to anvils not balloons. The truth is, it was very hard to move that “effortlessly”, especially when equal concentration had to be made to moving our feet at the same time.

My point is that hope sounds wonderful and fluffy, but it comes with a good deal of hard work. We look forward to open doors to part before us, but it is our feet that move us through them. You can’t move across the floor with grace without putting in hours of practice to develop it. Hope is only hopeful when we put ourselves in position to grab it. And when there’s nothing in the world that we can do, we position our hearts to expect what we need. That takes work. Hope is not trusting that a fairy godmother will show up to take us out of our misery. Real hope is based on reality. Do you hope to be a great writer? Then work your craft. Do you hope to lose thirty pounds? Then knock off the cookies and go walk.

Hope is not a band-aid, it’s the carrot to get us working toward our own goals. I have a lot to hope for this year. That means I have a lot to do. The rest is up to God to bless. I’m so thankful that He puts those hopes in me because He does like to bless.