A while ago I was talking with my parents, who were working on a home project. My mom said she was hoping that the project would be finished at the end of a certain time period, and my dad responded by telling her not to hope, because then she would be disappointed when the project didn’t get finished when she wanted it to. I was a little confused, and said that I thought hope was a good thing. Doesn’t hope lift you, not make you feel worse? My dad then reminded me of that scene in one of the Batman movies where they were stuck in a prison at the bottom of a giant pit. They could see the way out, but no one could successfully leave the prison, despite being in view of the exit. He said that in that case, having the hope of escape was a bad thing, since it just made them feel worse when they couldn’t leave. I wasn’t convinced; so, I did some thinking. I came to the conclusion that hope itself isn’t a bad thing, it’s when that hope is taken away that people feel worse. But how can we prevent hope from being taken away? We don’t have control over a lot of things (for example, this pandemic), so where can we place our hope that we know it won’t fail us? The answer, of course, is Heavenly Father and His son, Jesus Christ. I have a quote here from my favorite author, J.R.R. Tolkien. In his book The Lord of the Rings, the main character and his best friend are set on an impossible quest through the desolate land of Mordor. It is in this land that this observation is made. “There, peeping above the cloud-wrack . . . high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end, the shadow was only a small and passing thing. There was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”
The stars are always there, even when the clouds cover our view of them. And just like the stars, our Savior is always there, even when the troubles of our earth life make it seem like He’s not.