Keeping Your HOPE Alive

P.O Box 1540, Albany Western Australia 6331
Phone/Fax: (08) 98 418 418
E-mail: abl-alb@omninet.net.au

Keeping Your HOPE Alive
Friends, as we approach the coming year of 2007, I'd like to encourage each of you, no matter how difficult this year of 2006 may have been, to keep your hope alive. And the reason I say this, is because Hope is a gift waiting for all who have - a powerful wish for life to be better than it is, the imagination to look beyond the bad that is to the good that can be, and the faith to believe that the good they imagine and wish for is possible. In fact, Hope is an amazing, God-given gift. It fuels your dreams, lightens your spirits, and lifts your despair. And when your life becomes a battlefield, hope digs in and fights the good fight. And to help you understand what I've just stated, let me take your mind back to one early evening as the dusk darkened the always-shadowed Sistine Chapel, when Michelangelo, weary, sore and doubtful, climbed down the ladder from his scaffolding where he'd been lying on his back since dawn painting the chapel ceiling. After eating a lonely dinner, he wrote a sonnet to his aching body. The last line (was)…"I am no painter." But when the sun shone again, Michelangelo got up from his bed, climbed back up on his scaffold, and laboured another day on his magnificent vision of the Creator at work on His brand-new world. What pushed him up the ladder? Could it have been anything but a hope born again from a night's rest, a hope just strong enough to keep the doubts in check for another day, a hope that became the energy to paint the greatest picture of them all? Hope - what promise that word holds! From prompting Michelangelo to pick up his paintbrush to energizing you to stand strong in the midst of struggle, hope is God's life-giving gift to each of us. During the cold war in Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel spent half of his days in jail and half of them at a menial job in a state brewery. All the while, however, he was the poet of hope for the Czech people. Finally, the wall came down. Czechoslovakia became a free republic, and Havel became its first president. Later, he was asked how he kept going during those decades of despair. "I'm not an optimist," he said, "I am a person of hope…I cannot imagines that I would strive for anything if I did not carry hope in me." Yes, the power to strive. But hope also gives people the power simply to endure. "How come," asks Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim, "Jews are still around after thousands of years, most of them in exile," often persecuted, and sometimes all but annilihilated? "There is only one answer," he inisists, "and that answer is hope." My friend, all that I have said, in what I am sharing with you today, leads to one conclusion. Which is: Hope is the spiritual power for living successfully as creatures endowed with the God-like ability to imagine the future but stuck with the humanlike inability to control it. I cannot vouch for the report that he said it, but if he did say it, Martin Luther was seeing reality with his usual clean-sweep vision: "Everything that is done in the world is done by hope." So, as we come toward the close of 2006, I encourage you to remember…Hope is the energy to strive for what we hope for. And we keep striving as long as we keep hoping. If you lose hope, you lose desire, you lose your dream, you lose your faith, and you lose your inner power to strive for the better future you can imagine but cannot control. Therefore, no matter what life has brought to you this year my friend, I'm encouraging you to remember that God's hope and comfort can sustain you. So keep your hope alive! I look forward to sharing more thoughts with you next week. Your friend, Ron.

Friends, as we approach the coming year of 2007, I'd like to encourage each of you, no matter how difficult this year of 2006 may have been, to keep your hope alive. And the reason I say this, is because Hope is a gift waiting for all who have - a powerful wish for life to be better than it is, the imagination to look beyond the bad that is to the good that can be, and the faith to believe that the good they imagine and wish for is possible.

In fact, Hope is an amazing, God-given gift. It fuels your dreams, lightens your spirits, and lifts your despair. And when your life becomes a battlefield, hope digs in and fights the good fight.

And to help you understand what I've just stated, let me take your mind back to one early evening as the dusk darkened the always-shadowed Sistine Chapel, when Michelangelo, weary, sore and doubtful, climbed down the ladder from his scaffolding where he'd been lying on his back since dawn painting the chapel ceiling. After eating a lonely dinner, he wrote a sonnet to his aching body. The last line (was)…"I am no painter."

But when the sun shone again, Michelangelo got up from his bed, climbed back up on his scaffold, and laboured another day on his magnificent vision of the Creator at work on His brand-new world. What pushed him up the ladder? Could it have been anything but a hope born again from a night's rest, a hope just strong enough to keep the doubts in check for another day, a hope that became the energy to paint the greatest picture of them all?

Hope - what promise that word holds! From prompting Michelangelo to pick up his paintbrush to energizing you to stand strong in the midst of struggle, hope is God's life-giving gift to each of us.

During the cold war in Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel spent half of his days in jail and half of them at a menial job in a state brewery. All the while, however, he was the poet of hope for the Czech people. Finally, the wall came down. Czechoslovakia became a free republic, and Havel became its first president. Later, he was asked how he kept going during those decades of despair. "I'm not an optimist," he said, "I am a person of hope…I cannot imagines that I would strive for anything if I did not carry hope in me."

Yes, the power to strive. But hope also gives people the power simply to endure. "How come," asks Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim, "Jews are still around after thousands of years, most of them in exile," often persecuted, and sometimes all but annilihilated? "There is only one answer," he inisists, "and that answer is hope."

My friend, all that I have said, in what I am sharing with you today, leads to one conclusion. Which is: Hope is the spiritual power for living successfully as creatures endowed with the God-like ability to imagine the future but stuck with the humanlike inability to control it. I cannot vouch for the report that he said it, but if he did say it, Martin Luther was seeing reality with his usual clean-sweep vision: "Everything that is done in the world is done by hope."

So, as we come toward the close of 2006, I encourage you to remember…Hope is the energy to strive for what we hope for. And we keep striving as long as we keep hoping. If you lose hope, you lose desire, you lose your dream, you lose your faith, and you lose your inner power to strive for the better future you can imagine but cannot control.

Therefore, no matter what life has brought to you this year my friend, I'm encouraging you to remember that God's hope and comfort can sustain you. So keep your hope alive!

I look forward to sharing more thoughts with you next week. Your friend, Ron.