Whether someone has done it for you or you did it yourself, it’s much nicer to come home at night to the welcome of a lamp rather than having to poke around in the darkness. Even a little light says “Welcome home. We didn’t forget you.”
How do you offer welcome?
Holly is an ancient symbol of the season, a proof that life endures even when all seems dead. It is beautiful , but it is also fierce, as anyone who has been stabbed by a holly leaf can tell you. Beautiful is good, but it turns out that fierce is sometimes what gets you through the winter.
How has being fierce helped you to get through?
Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.
—Martin Luther
What have you managed to accomplish on the basis of hope?
Emily Dickinson famously wrote that “Hope is a thing with feathers.” But sometimes hope arrives as something lighter still, even a single feather.
What tiny thing gives you hope?
Hope is a belief that things will get better. And sometimes things do just get better on their own—but mostly change comes because someone cares enough to make things different.
How do you build hope for others?
