Hope Springs

Sometimes you look at the world and want to go back to sleep.

On top of the ongoing saga of the Philpott trial, there's the North Korean sabre-rattling, the Saudi idea that it is rational to paralyse a man as a legal punishement.

And it's still freezing cold. The frogs have started spawning, but I reckon that's just a desperate attempt to keep warm.

And yet not only does the sun keep rising -at least for now - it's a little earlier every day. The birds are very definitely flitting around in meaningful ways. And in Husborne Crawley, Woburn and Hockliffe, lambs are being born that will delight us for months to come. At least, until it's time for us to roast them.

Ah me, the world has always been a place with mixed good and bad. And against all apparent common sense, I choose to assume that the bad is the aberration, and good is the natural trajectory of things. Not a 19th Century, Progress-worshipping trajectory, where good is coming in to supplant the bad, based on Reason and Science. The 20th Century taught us that Progress and Science may be good servants, but they're dreadful idols. I'm going to cling onto the hope that says this world will always be bad - and sometimes it will get worse. If we're brave and good and keep our minds and hearts open, sometimes we can mitigate with some good - create islands of good acts in a sea of despair. And when the sea is done away with, then we'll find out whether we're clinging to the safety of a tropical paradise - or we've mistakenly pitched our tents on the back of a whale.

All I'm saying is - don't be surprised at bad things in life. Constantly to expect that the world should be better than it is, is a mark of the One that will make all well in the end. But never lose hope that all will be made well. It just needs a better Maker than us.