Hope

Today our friend Ryan Mack's mother passed away after a long and courageous battle with breast cancer. We were told that her passing was as peaceful as possible, surrounded by family, and that she absolutely felt the love in the room, and yet it still seemed wrong that the sun kept shining so brightly outside when we got the news. Jeffrey and I both wanted the world (the weather, the water) to bow its head with her passing, but instead, as it always does, life went on.

So those who didn't know the Mack family enjoyed their sunny September day, and those who did know the Mack family enjoyed instead the warmth of the hope that lives in the hearts of believers and reminds them of the better world that Sandy went home to today.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

-Emily Dickinson