I changed recently the cover photo on my Facebook page (www.facebook.com/RabbiJohnLRosove) to the image here of the winter sky hovering over the Mediterranean Sea that I took eight years ago from the Tel Aviv shore. It suggests, I believe, what we are facing today as a world-wide community. On the one hand, the sky flows between dark and light grays. Yet, waiting to burst through the cloud cover is sunlight.

We are most assuredly living in dark times, but light shines in the extraordinary deeds of loving-kindness performed by courageous health care workers on behalf of the sick and dying, by those reaching out by phone, text, email, and social media to maintain connections with single isolated people (young, middle age, and senior), by the many front-line workers sustaining our communities in vital jobs, and by many of our nation’s governors, mayors, and members of Congress working on behalf of the safety and sustainability of all (American citizens and non-citizens alike). Collectively, they remind us, if we need reminding, that we “are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality” (Dr. Martin Luther King, March 31, 1968).

I don’t recall who wrote the following, but its wisdom is worth sharing:

“Hope is a commandment of the heart in the face of uncertainty, a vision that opens up the future, based on trust, supportive of purpose, enabling us to live in an enhanced present of constructive waiting.”