Today's Daily Lesson comes from Proverbs chapter 12 verse 11:
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life."
I am thinking this morning of the great Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes's poem, "A Dream Deferred", which is essential reading for a time like this. If you aren't familiar with it please close this post, Google, read, and reflect upon it.
A dream cannot be put off forever. Hope can't be deferred indefinitely. There has to be progress. There has to be meaningful and systemic change, lest the heart grow sick with frustration and the Spirit poisoned with anger.
A dream deferred is a "raisin in the sun" -- and a reason for so much of the rage we see in our streets right now.
But "a desire fulfilled is a tree of life."
It's the center of a new garden. It's the hope of a new world. Everything hangs upon it -- all which is pleasing and desirous to they eye and good for the sustenance and growth of all those living together in Eden. All may eat of the tree of life, and rest at peace with one another beneath the boughs of its branches.
This is a vision for a new way of living with one another. Let us not let it die in our dreams in this dark night, but hasten it into our awakening when the sun comes up again.
NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible together this year. Tomorrow's Lesson will come from Proverbs chapters 16-18.
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