Hope does not live only on the past

In difficult stages you return to moments of light: unexpected help, a conversion, or a prayer that was answered. That memory combats the notion that you have never been accompanied. Yet if you only trust in repeating past experiences, you can easily close the door to new ways. God is not obliged to copy the exact manner in which he acted back then. Hope looks forward. Remembering well does not freeze you. It draws out a certainty—God was faithful—and entrusts it to an open future whose design you do not know. In this way you can ask for something concrete without imposing the format of the answer. The past becomes a root, not a refuge. It sustains you to move towards a good that perhaps you will recognize only after having walked through it.