Amidst the glittering lights, carols and good cheer, this season leading up to Christmas strikes me as one where hope can be difficult to see. The hospital is full, relationships are strained and our economic reality remains tenuous at best. These are difficult days.

I remember visiting an area of a hospital once where people were struggling with all sorts of things: memory loss, mobility concerns and mental health issues. There was one younger man who walked the halls introducing himself to each person he met. Each time he met them he said, "hello, it's good to be alive." For the little time I was there, he must have said it a dozen times, "it's good to be alive."

Hope surprises us with good news through the cracks. Not encased in fortitude or concrete, hope finds its way through the places that are not all together, nicely wrapped and presented with a smile. What moves me about hope is that it arrives without effort or purchasing power. Hope finds me far more often than I discover it. Making room for hope is not always easy. I have far too much clutter rattling around inside that creating room can be quite a challenge.

From the hallways of a hospital and beneath layers of snow, hope rises up. For me, hope's roots are found in the soil of life; those moments mixed with suffering and healing, fear and faith, wounds and new life. Hope's ways may be silent ones for a time but like the hidden promise of winter, there is much happening beneath the surface.