Needed: A Bucketful of Hope

"In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me a glorious summer."
    --Albert Camus

This time of the year when the ground is crusty and the wind cuts through you even in Alabama—I remember a poem that always lifts me up. Everybody I know needs a bucketful of hope. Carlyle Marney said one time that the problem is that too many of our buckets have holes in them. Nevermind. This poem I share with you may help plug up the hole in your bucket—and maybe nudge you down the road just a mite.

Temp Sparkman and his wife faced a terrible ordeal years ago. One afternoon in midsummer their little nine-year-old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. Weeks later, with little preparation, she was gone. They faced the terrible task of trying to pick up the broken pieces of their lives and try to live again. Later that year this young minister wrote this poem about hope in a terribly hopeless time.

“Was the grass really ever green
Were the sounds of birds really clearly heard

And did we picnic in the park only six short

   months ago
Here in mid-winter they seem so far away
The naked trees, the leaden skies seem always
   to have been
And seem out ahead for all time
Were things really ever green
And will the spring come back again?

Yes the spring will return

The gray, dull days of cold will pass

The routine now imprisoning us will be broken up

A new excitement will be awakened by new possibilities
The despair which now engulfs us will subside
A word of hope will come to us
Our presumption that all is lost will be replaced
   by a renewed expectancy.
Future will become a possibility again
The crush of demand will not dominate us forever
Out of liberation we will learn to choose
And in our choices to be secure.

The sadness now weighing upon us will be lifted
Joy will speak her acknowledgment of grief and
   will sound her call to us
The cause of sadness will not have vanished
But joy will come in spite of it

We will laugh again

We will sing and dance

We will celebrate the life now given us.

The conflicts now engaging our energy will be

worked through

No wind will sweep them from us

We will go through them

   and we will survive

Redemption will come of our transactions

Relationships will be rescued and restored

And where breaks are too deep to be one,

Healing will come in time, though apart

The tension tearing at our being will be resolved

We will not be destroyed.

Were things really ever green

And will the spring come back again

Yes, yes, as sure as e’re it were here

Yes, yes, as sure as winter’s here

Yes, yes, as sure as God is

The spring will return

And it will be green again.”

And if I had a benediction it would simply be: I hope this promise of spring will come to us all.