At times
the evil in the world overwhelms me.

I stand in awe of those
who continue to stand in hope.

I know hope comes from deeper truth,
but that deep truth
can be so obscured,
so pressed down,
so weighted
by greed, fear, alienation and hate,
so immersed in the depths,
that I, too, feel the world's despair.

"Raise me," I pray.
"Turn my eyes upward, outward, inward
to see and experience
what is high and lifted up.

"If great women and men
could hold onto that vision
at times of such darkness
and still love, still forgive, still hold the faith–
then with your help, I can too."

[Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day,
Viktor Frankl, Desmond Tutu, Gandhi–
all faced such incredible cruelty and/or hardship,
yet somehow
still held to the belief
that something better is possible,
that God still walks the earth with and in them,
that peace, love and unity
are the truer, deeper reality.]

Text and image © 2011 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.