In the late 1990s there was a movie titled “Hope Floats.”  Yes, hope can be buoyant.  It can rise to the surface and remain no matter the waters.

While I can identify with those “watery” qualities of hope, for me, hope doesn’t float.  It sprouts.  It grows.  It sends its roots out deep into the earth while at the same time it reaches for the light.  It can appear quite fragile – like a simple little purple crocus growing right now in the middle of winter in our garden.  Or like the fragile fruitless strawberry vines in our garden.   But hope’s root system is deep and tenacious.

No, for me hope doesn’t float, it sprouts.

It takes up residence.

We may not see its “work” going on beneath the surface, but then one day, we notice.  Life.  Sprouting.

And deep within us we sense hope’s tenacity and its ability to break through the rocks and mud and into the light.

And we recognize that somehow, both beyond us (grace) and also with our permission, we have invited hope in and it is in every cell of our bodies.  Breathing us into our next breath.  And the next one.

And we sense that, somehow, life has a way of triumphing over death.  Again and again.

So I’ll take the unusually warm days here in January and February with our crocus sprouting.  These little purple gems remind me that in the dead of winter and my now new long walks as I commute in the wee hours of the early morning before the world wakes up that spring does in fact always follow winter.  And hope always sprouts.