I imagine that you could say preaching, teaching, writing, and other things like this are about giving hope, about being a “spy for hope,” searching for it in order to share it with others so that they might have hope.
Kate DiCamillo posted this on her Facebook page on April 11, 2013:
In the mail this week: a letter I cannot stop thinking about.
Written by an adult, unsigned, no return address.
This person is having a lousy, lousy time; and she (or he) wanted me to know that my stories have helped.
“Thank you for letting Despereaux be a hero and allowing Otis to keep a job and giving the magician a loving wife.”
Something about this just undoes me.
I showed the letter to a friend who said, “Man, that person really needed some hope.”
And I thought: that’s it. Hope.
Katherine Paterson once said that writing books for children is being a “spy for hope.”
I am so grateful to be doing this, to be spying for hope.
That’s what authors like DiCamillo and Tolkien and Lewis and others are for me, spies for hope. They write stories that declare truths inherent in the warp and woof of life, inescapable reality that, whether intentional or not, proclaims the only one who can give us hope – God.
I Commend Joy! 