Author: Doug Harrison

The miracle of the oil is a simple one. There wasn’t enough oil to keep the lamp lit for more than one day, but it lasted eight full days. Just enough time to get more.

This year has reminded me a lot of the fragility of history. The “year in review” videos are popping up on FaceBook, websites, news channels. Social stability, the economy, and heck, even the weather seems delicate enough to go any which way.  The future has exposed its own uncertainty

Sometimes I hesitate to call it until I get a clear sense that “everything is going to be ok. But I usually don’t get to see everything, let alone be assured that it is ok.   The miracle of Chanukah is not that the entire outcome of the future was revealed. The miracle was not the sudden appearance of endless amounts of oil. It was just enough oil each night for one more day, for just enough days… until they could get more oil.

I have come to believe  hope carries itself with us like a small lantern: Just enough to see the step you are on, and the next one you need to take. It turns out that kind of light can take you anywhere.

So much of what I have been writing on this season has been giftedness: how you are a gift, and the importance of welcoming the gifts of others.  I hope for whatever reasons it is clear to you at least some of what you bring to relationships and how you contribute to the world.  But of course there is other the other side of the coin.  Some of us live in constant if not overwhelming fear that it is our weakness, our darkness that comes through, or is at least just below the surface.  Here is why that is not a problem…

Day 13: I will hold it for you.

Perhaps some of the best news of hope is that when you lose it, I can hold it for you.  Let me know when you need some.

Funny How when you ask for it, it multiplies and I have more too.  None us us can sustain a perfect anything.   But hope is a collective virtue and the vary nature of it is that it is not sustained by me alone.