Unexpected moments

I know for a fact that this photo is not altered because I took it myself.

That's my chopping block as the background, though I no longer remember what I chopped before the bell pepper that left the little scrap. (I'd considered using the photo for an April 1 post some year when April 1 is suitably far from Holy Week, with a premise that it was an apparition of the smiley-face emoji.)

Lately I have been struggling with maintaining Christian hope toward the future while looking at the amount of dark in the world. And, sure, the smiley-pepper is not exactly a game-changer. But it is the kind of thing I can easily miss if I am focusing only on "worthier" things. 

Fellowship is built one day at a time. Consensus is built one conversation at a time. There is much darkness; perseverance is a virtue well-suited to dark times. And in the middle of dark times, sometimes we need to come up for air. Even that can be a moment of shared humanity.