Faces on Faith: Celebrations of hope
Can any month be more filled with hope than June? Let’s start with the obvious: graduations, like our granddaughter’s graduation from high school. These days there are graduation ceremonies for everything from nursery school and kindergarten, all the way to high school and college. Each one marks an accomplishment, a successful effort put forth, a feather in your cap. There’s nothing like a pat on the back for a job well done. Each of these events overflows with hope for a future filled with the anticipation of exciting days ahead.
Of course, June is also the traditional month for weddings, and nothing could hold more hope than the anticipation of marrying that very special person in your life. Love and hope bubble over and happiness abounds. Our normally sunny Sanibel weather could also be a factor in these happy ceremonies, and our islands might be the favored beach location for many of those joyful June brides. Each celebration is one of wonderful possibilities full of hope for the future.
In addition to these more familiar events, June also heralds some celebrations of hope that perhaps you were not aware of. In 1938, June 3 became the official day to honor the hole-iest of confections — the donut. During World War I, members of the Salvation Army, or the “Donut Dollies,” shared donuts with soldiers as a sweet treat to add to their rations. And more recently in 2008, the United Nations designated June 8 as World Ocean Day, honoring the part of our planet covered in water, which amazingly is most of it.
All of these joyful June celebrations revolve around a feeling of hope. Hope gives us the courage to take on the next chapter of our lives, and to handle even the most serious challenges. Hope that is grounded in the unseen connection we each have with our father-mother God is solid and unchanging. As Jeremiah 29:11 says in the NLT Bible translation, “I know the plans I have for you. They are plans for good, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”
Mary L. Miller is affiliated with the Sanibel Christian Science Church.