A picture in my head

photo by karen bryan

Things break here. They decay, and they go wrong. Fingers get pinched in rusty swing chains and it’s no longer fun. Wood rots, and all the little nuts and bolts that hold together the things we love rust and crack. Time wears away at the surface of glass. This is simply how it is. But if you pick up a handful of that brokenness in one hand, your rusty swing chain in the other, then drop it down in a wheat field in northern Idaho and look up; it wouldn’t matter. You may have to watch your step if you had bare feet, but all you’d see would be a thousand shades of waving gold, and mountains, and a thousand shades of blue and purple and green. You would hear water moving; you would see the sky. All those little pieces of brokenness and loss would fade away. It’s simple, but it helps me. I wonder if that’s how big hope should be.