carrots and hope

The other week in Sacrament Meeting the speaker was talking about hope.  Before getting all into hope, he gave us a quick faith re-cap using Alma's seed analogy (the gist of which is that we take the Word of God, we plant it in our hearts, and we nourish it through our faith in Christ, and it grows up into a testimony tree, which bears Eternal Life fruit.  If you've never read the analogy before, you should.  It's good stuff.) Basically, faith is bigger than believing a thing, it's believing a thing enough that we alter our behavior to reflect said belief.  Like James says, "faith without works is dead".  

OK.  So then the speaker guy says, “If faith can be defined as acting on a certain belief, then hope is the part of belief where there is no action left to do.  It is the looking forward to the receipt of certain blessings that have been promised after all we are able to do.”  

And that's when my brain exploded.  No.  Way.  No action left to do?  Hope is waiting?   

I mean, duh, right?  But HOW did I miss this??  Hope is totally hands off.  It’s that part of gardening where I’ve put the seeds in the ground, and now I’m just chillin’, waiting for them to come up.  I’ve still gotta water 'em-- right, of course-- but other than that?  I’ve got no power to induce germination-- either they will or they won’t-- and if God promised me that my seeds will come up, then, seriously, what am I losing sleep over? 

But that's not the end of the story.  

I've got this little carrot seed.  The package I got it from directs me to prepare the soil just so, and plant the seed just so.  Then it says I should not expect to see anything for about two weeks.  Easy peasy.  But have you ever planted carrots?  Every time I’ve ever planted carrots it’s been longer than two weeks before any ferny little leaves have broken soil.  The carrots I’ve got growing in my garden right now I put in the ground about a year ago.  

Thoreau said this cool thing once:  "It is by mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life.  We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve our true course."  

The "polestar" I've chosen to keep in my eye is Peace.  The big kind.  The kind one can only really internalize when one understands God and self and the relationship between the two.  I've been thwarted in some of my travels because occasionally I forget to focus on the polestar, and have instead focused on the destination and arrival time.  For example, carrots take two weeks to germinate, and sailing to Hawaii from San Francisco takes about a month.  What does it mean, then, if after three years I have no carrots, and there's no sign of Hawaii?  (Insert weeks of fretting and fussing here.)  Perhaps it means that I didn't really plant carrots, or that I planted carrots that someone else harvested and I'm really working with pecan trees.  Or maybe they're the Three Year Carrot variety.  And maybe I am sailing to Hawaii by way of Indonesia.  Or Spain... ugh.

And I still don't have any real conclusions, but I do have a few solutions:  First, I'm not really traveling a direct route anywhere.  I'm plotting course according to my "polestar", so the route is true and correct, it's just not going to be the shortest distance between two points.  Ever.  Second, I didn't plant carrots.  I have no idea what I actually put in the ground, so I don't really know what kind of seedlings I'm watching for (I mean, I could have just planted unicorns, for crying out loud) but I do know that I'm trying really hard to let God direct my paths, so whatever comes up is going to be just the thing, whether that thing is a carrot or a unicorn.  Third, it's time to learn how to hope.  None of that squishy greeting card kind of hope, either.  More the hands off, patiently waiting, fully expectant, kind of hope.  The kind of hope that's all like, "Dude. I'm all done putting these seeds in the ground.  Let's go ride bikes!"