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More from William Balch

December 16, 2024 by William Balch (Pennsylvania, USA)

Living as I do in a rural part of Pennsylvania, I am often inspired by the many species of birds and animals that are plentiful around my home. At one time or another, my wife and I have seen in or near our yard: wild turkey, pheasants, foxes, bears, opossum, deer, and you name it. Deer are a special concern when I drive in the evening because they don’t necessarily look both ways before they cross the road. The sparrow that I referred to in my meditation was an unexpected gift as a subject for me to write about when I saw it trying so persistently to join its flock on a telephone wire.

As I wrote in “A Persistent Sparrow,” this observation made me think about the role that perseverance and hope have played in my own life. In that devotional, I was focusing on hope in God. When I was younger, however, I don’t remember thinking of hope too much in religious terms. As I imagine may be true of many people, I looked at hope mainly in terms of my secular goals such as my major in college, my career aspirations, my social relationships, and so forth.

One experience, which led me to see hope more as faith in God, stemmed from a painful divorce that I went through. Although I had a satisfactory career teaching in a large university, my personal life seemed hopeless. Something that helped me sort out this mess was joining a church. The minister there was wonderful to talk to. I also had a former student who showed me some techniques to calm down through meditation. Through my church membership and meditating, I began to see that faith in God could help me persevere through a slow process of straightening out my personal life.

Now that I am retired, I find that my faith has deepened and extended beyond my personal concerns. For instance, I have become more involved in community service by playing the clarinet in several musical groups. My spirituality has also been broadened by reading The Upper Room and following the stories of people who have shared their faith. Through their sharing, I was inspired to share my own faith in my devotional, “A Persistent Sparrow.”

In that devotional, I expressed my view that hope in God is rare in our world today. How could there actually be much of this kind of hope when violence and social divisions have become so common now? Often people just don’t seem to like each other very much anymore. I think that more people having more hope in God’s goodness would certainly not make things worse. Perhaps it would even make things a little better. That is my persistent hope.


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