DAILY DOSE OF HOPE – BLOG – NAIMA LETT
HOPE’S ANTHEM
[REPOST] October 26, 2012
Hope’s Anthem, ©William Matthews/Bethel
Did you know hope has an anthem?
Like it’s own theme song?
I found out last night.
A group of dear friends introduced us to Hope’s Anthem, a worship song by William Matthews, (iTunes). My husband and I are so grateful that our fam surrounded and prayed for us and our hope. And God answered their prayers. By the time they started singing with the song, “Let hope arise!”, hope was indeed a’rising.
That’s the funny thing about hope.
It loves to rise.
Hope’s definition is the feeling that events will turn out for the best. Deep down, we all want to believe that things will get better. On a subconscious level, we yearn for that future with God when “there is no more more death or mourning or crying or pain”.(Revelation 21:3-4)
We hope in God, who has power over death itself and who raised Jesus from the dead. We’re still in the Easter season that spans from Resurrection Sunday to Pentecost, and we’re reminded that our hope is eternal.
Last Friday, I came across the following proverb when preparing the blog, There’s Hope!. It was brought up last night as well.
Proverbs 13:12
12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.
Isn’t that so true?
The line immediately popped up from Langston Hughes’ poem A Dream Deferred in which he asks, “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”
That’s the line that spurred A Raisin in the Sun, the Tony Award nominated Best Play by Lorraine Hansberry, who at age 29, just a few years before she passed away from cancer, became the youngest American playwright to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Best Play Award. A Raisin in the Sun opened in 1959 as the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway, as well as the first Broadway play with an African American director, Lloyd Richards.
Talk about giving hope to a generation!
Lorraine’s story gave me hope as a child that I, too, could write plays and screenplays. Look at what she accomplished in just 34 years on this planet.
And then, in 2004, A Raisin in the Sun was revived on Broadway and Emmy Award nominee Phylicia Rashād, best known for “The Cosby Show”, became the first African-American actress to win the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play and Audra McDonald won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress. That was a beautiful night.
Again, hope for generations to come.
And it’s not just all about awards. The first time I met Phylicia Rashād during a master class workshop at our alma mater Howard University, she took time and poured into us. She encouraged us that anything’s possible. She and her sister Debbie Allen were two of the powerhouses that inspired me to pursue the BFA in Acting from Howard University in the first place. They gave this aspiring actor-dancer from Augusta hope.
Lorraine and Phylicia had to have massive amounts of hope that things would turn out for their best in order persevere in their careers as playwright and actress and to achieve things that had not happened before.
I meet artists weekly who are full of hope. They have left family, careers and security and driven out to Hollywood to make their dreams come true. Then, there comes a time when hope is deferred.
The proverb says when our hope is postponed, it breaks our hearts. But our desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
We see THE tree of life at the earth’s birth (Genesis 2:9) and rebirth (Revelation 22:1-2). Scripture says the tree of life bears its fruit every month and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.
Who wouldn’t want to bear fruit each month? Who wouldn’t want growth that heals nations? That’s the analogy being drawn when our longings are fulfilled, when our dreams are accomplished.
Happy Monday, Fam!
It’s a new week! Full of possibilities and opportunities to bear fruit and heal nations.
I pray for you too that your hope is fulfilled this week.
Need an anthem?
Hope’s Anthem is pretty good.
Go head. Worship with William Matthews.
And by all means, let hope arise.
Lett’s Rise!
Naima
