"Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again"

The words invite a posture of active expectation, less a sugary optimism than a chosen openness to renewal. Hope isn’t summoned from nowhere; it’s rekindled, as if an ember has lingered beneath ash, needing only breath and attention. To expect hope is to orient the heart toward warmth again, trusting that the inner fire can be coaxed back to life.

“Prayers” here can mean literal petitions or the depth of our most honest longings. Expecting answers “in wondrous ways” loosens our grip on how help must arrive. Life often refuses our scripts yet meets our needs with surprising choreography: the door that shut becomes the hallway toward a truer room; a chance encounter becomes provision; timing, once maddening, reveals an elegant logic. Wonder is the space between our plans and the mystery of how grace manages to reach us anyway.

The image of dry seasons carries an ancient, earthy wisdom. There are stretches when nothing seems to grow, when the ground is hard and the air unyielding. Yet dormancy is not death. Roots deepen out of sight, conserving life until conditions change. Pruning can look like loss while preparing the branch for fruit. The promise isn’t that droughts won’t come, but that they don’t have the final word. Spring rains return. Seeds respond. Color moves back into the fields.

Between drought and rain is our work: to keep the soil of our days tilled and ready, to water what we can, to pull the weeds of cynicism, to store the little we have so it can carry us. Expectation becomes a quiet discipline. It sharpens perception, so we notice small openings and say yes to them. It steadies effort without demanding immediate results. Keep showing up. Ask for help. Leave room for surprise. The seasons are faithful. When the clouds finally gather, the parched earth remembers how to drink, and hope, like green shoots, lifts its head again.