“Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
When I first heard this voiced in the 2011 movie “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” I was delighted. The statement is attributed to several different people including John Lennon and Fernando Sabino. It’s a phrase of hope and surety, that thing with feathers that perches in your soul as Emily Dickinson poetically said.
It’s also very biblical. The Psalms are full of despair and hope; trust in a God that brings peace beyond our understanding as Jesus promised. Our world is deeply broken and it’s easy to be disheartened right now. The Israelites must have despaired when facing the Red Sea with the Pharoah’s army close behind them, but God made a way where there was no way. Psalm 30:5 promises, “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Isaiah declares that “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isa. 43:19, one of HOF’s grounding scriptures.) Jesus faced his death in the garden of Gethsemane and prayed to God for another way. God gave him strength to go forward and endure what was to come. For Christ death was not the end. Hope was in the resurrection.
As spiritual directors, retreat leaders and people of faith, we are privileged to journey with people seeking a way in the desert. In our very fragmented world, our companionship with others is needed more now than ever. Now, more than ever, we need to firmly ground ourselves in God’s hope to give us that peace that passes understanding in order to be there for others.
Faced with troubling times, how do we hold on? There is so much we cannot control. How do we live with peace and grace when it feels like we are in the wilderness? How do we firmly ground ourselves? In what ways do you listen deeply to your own soul, to the Holy within? We matter and our work with others matters. Where do you gather strength for the journey?
Prayer, meditation, scripture, nature (as our board member Bill Campbell reminded us at our last Recalibration Live! event), and gathering as community are all ways to nurture our souls and remind ourselves that if things are not okay, it’s not the end. God makes a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.
We at Hearts on Fire seek to provide some support as a source of community and inspiration in our gatherings and on our Facebook page. We hope you join us for one of our upcoming Recalibration Live! zoom events, on our Facebook page and in July of 2027 for our in-person retreat in Citrus Heights near Sacramento, California.
Everything will be okay, or as Julian of Norwich said, “All shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be well.” So be it. Amen.
By Rev. Linda Kelly, spiritual director, supervisor, retired UM pastor, and Hearts on Fire board president. You can contact her at [email protected].
This reflection represents the view of the author.