Anselm Fellow Lancia Smith has written a breathtaking piece over at Ekstasis which you MUST read. (To give you an idea: the subtitle is “on cultivating the culture of tomorrow.”
Excerpt:
Many years ago, I was homeless. Not figuratively, literally. I had lost everything I ever owned, not once but twice. The first time I was alone; the second time, I was an alcoholic married to a practicing addict. This time, my family and I were evicted from our apartment, and we ended up in an emergency family shelter for the weekend. I was a 26 year old mother of four children. Landing here was my greatest fear, worse than when I had been homeless in the streets by myself. This was worse because it was in front of my children, as witnesses and victims. We were displaced, powerless, ashamed, and hopeless. As it sometimes happens, I was met at the bottom of the well of fear and shame with a great grace. Right there in the terrifying pit, I was given a gift.
Some kind soul knew our plight and had left a box of food and necessities for us in our room. Decades later, I remember that box, not so much for its contents as for the rush of mercy I felt opening it, and for its accompanying note—a single piece of unlined typing paper folded into thirds addressed to our family. I opened it up to find only these words handwritten inside.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” — Jeremiah 29:11, ESV
Even now, I cannot explain how, but when I read those words, they sounded like they were being spoken aloud, alive, and in person to me specifically and intimately. They reverberated in my mind, bypassing the cloud of shame and fear. I remember something happened within me as I read them. I believed them.
All these years later, I still believe them. The idea of “a future and a hope” isn’t something we manufacture out of a state of wishful thinking; it isn’t a mental night-light in denial of the darkness. It is a promise given by someone outside of time—someone who knows the end of it. Someone who knows the future in its full bloom as the present.
Read the full article at Ekstasis: