Got Hope?

I think you can tell when people have lost hope. They become negative. Quiet. Or they complain a lot. Their sentences begin with, "I can't believe what happened now..." or "Nothing good happens anymore..."

You think you know someone well, then almost suddenly, he/she changes into a stranger.

Hope is not wishing things were different. Hope is believing things will change--for the better.

Okay, things in this World are pretty negative right now. (I do poke my head out from under this rock once in awhile, you know.) But we can still believe for big changes in our own little corner of the world. We can believe that God will use us to change--to brighten--lives of unhappy people.

That's not so hard to believe. For others' sake, we can be a life-preserver and not a big, dark rock which carries them farther down. (I think I now understand the term, "hope floats.")

For others' sake, we can stop bathing in bad news and negative reporting. We can start swimming upstream, instead of floating downstream with the complaining crowd.

For others' sake, if not for our own, we can choose hope instead of despair.

Instead of languishing on a couch, we can choose to walk over and pull someone up from their own couch.

Joy is still available, you know.