Hope

A faith that really keeps to what is invisible and lives by it, acting as if it were already here, hopes at the same time for the time of fulfullment, of seeing and possessing. We hope for it as confidently as the hungry child to whom his father has promised bread can wait a while because he believes. Yet eventually the child wants to get the bread. Or take the music listener who willingly follows a dark interplay of disharmonies, but only in the certainty that these disharmonies will have to be resolved sooner or later. Or think of the patient who takes a bitter medicine so that the pain is finally taken away. A faith that does not hope is sick. It is like a hungry child who does not want to eat or a tired peron who does not want to sleep. Humankind hopes as surely as it believes. And it is not a disgrace to hope even beyond measure.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer