克里斯蒂娜．羅塞蒂（Christina Rosetti）是維多利亞時代的詩人，她在淒美的詩歌《更美的復活》中寫道：「抬起雙眼，滿是黯然與憂傷；看不見永恆不變的群山。」這首詩描繪了她在絕望之時仍抓緊盼望。儘管她「對盼望、對恐懼，都已陷入麻木」，但她內心的盼望超越她的絕望；儘管她「看不到初蕾和新綠」，那基督復活使她生命更新的跡象，但她承認一切要改變，並且祈求耶穌復興她的生命。

在哥林多後書1章，使徒保羅也描述他曾遭遇苦難，「因受到無法忍受的壓力，甚至連活命的指望都沒有了」（8節，和合本修訂版）。但他發現，這樣的絕望讓他學會單單將盼望放在那「叫死人復活的上帝」（9節）身上。

保羅也明白，雖我們這身體還是不完全的「瓦器」，但因為擁有福音的盼望，就能彰顯基督復活的生命和盼望，使人看見「這莫大的能力是出於上帝，不是出於我們」（4章7節）。

這樣的轉變也發生在羅塞蒂的詩中。當她將內心的破碎交給上帝時，她的禱告改變了。她將自己的生命比喻為碎裂的器皿，要被「拋入火裡」，被融化、重鑄，成為獻給她君王的御用之杯。她以簡單的一句話作為詩的結尾：「啊！耶穌，求祢使用我。」

“I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief / No everlasting hills I see,” wrote the Victorian poet Christina Rosetti in her poignant poem “A Better Resurrection.” Rosetti’s poem describes grasping for hope when she feels none, “numb’d too much for hopes or fears.” Yet Rosetti was anchored in a hope deeper than her feelings of despair. Though she could see “no bud nor greenness” pointing to Christ’s resurrection renewing her life, she confessed, “Yet rise it shall” and prayed, “O Jesus, rise in me.”

In 2 Corinthians, the apostle Paul also described experiencing suffering “far beyond [his] ability to endure, so that [he] despaired of life itself” (1:8). But he found that his despair taught him to find his hope only in “God, who raises the dead” (v. 9).

And he learned that as we carry the hope of the gospel in the still-imperfect “jars of clay” of our bodies, Christ’s resurrection life and hope shine through, revealing “that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (4:7).

This shift happens in Rosetti’s poem too. As she lifted her broken heart up to God, her prayer became only that the broken pieces of her life would be “cast in the fire” to be molded and transformed into an offering “for Him, my King.” Her poem concludes simply: “O Jesus, drink of me.”