Today’s guest post comes from Clyde of Mankato 

“Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

I suppose a few of you cannot identify that quote from Shawshank Redemption, a movie which portrays enduring hope as powerful, even when the only other option is despair, or maybe because the only other option is despair.

I do not picture myself as a hopeful person, but, as I think about the last fifty years, I see I often acted in hope. Because they are both about living in the present while preparing for the future, teaching and pastoring are hopeful acts. As is marriage.

Fifty years ago today Sandy and I stood in a church in Minneapolis and made promises to each other. The church, a substitute for a different church undergoing renovations, is named Hope. Two months later we joined a church in Dinkytown also named Hope. The coincidence of two churches named Hope struck us then and do me now. Without tracing why, I declare that hope is a thread woven through our marriage, not that I am offering anyone advice, mind you.

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tunes without the words and never stops at all.” Emily Dickinson

As I recall, I acknowledge with too simple a point of view, the two predominate political forces of 1965 were hope and hate. Many candidates and people who garnered public attention spoke openly with hate, and with its camouflaged cousin superiority. While I am more a moderate than a liberal, I too hoped we would put an end to hate as a political force, not by law so much as by a change in the hearts of a greater mass of common people.

So here we are in 2015. Need I identify to what we have returned? To which I answer with a voice from 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

Ignoring the hate, where do you see hope?