Hope Despite the Headlines

Let’s talk about hope, a short word with a tremendous impact. Are you running low or doing okay?

I have an incredible amount of hope that things will get better, but we’ll get to that later. What, exactly, is the power that hope gives? I have a good example.

From Parade Magazine comes the story of self-made millionaire Eugene Land. The impact he had on a class of sixth graders in East Harlem, New York City, was immeasurable.

We DO have hope despite the gloom and doom

He’d been asked to speak to a class of 59 sixth graders, an intimidating assignment for anyone. What could he say to inspire those students, most of whom would likely drop out of school? He wondered how to get these predominantly minority children to even look at him. Scrapping his notes, he decided to speak from the heart.

“Stay in school,” he encouraged the kids, “and I’ll help pay the college tuition of every one of you.”

Can you even imagine how much the lives of those students were changed at that very moment? For the first time, these kids had hope for a better life. One student said, “I had something to look forward to, something waiting for me. It was a golden feeling.”

An impressive 90 percent of that class went on to graduate high school against long odds because they had hope of something better on the way.

I have to be honest with you here. I’m a full-time freelance journalist, so my nose is in the news headlines every day, and it can get hard. The news headlines are enough to make a rational grown man a candidate for the giggling academy, and I’m in no way joking. Without hope for a better future, where does a man or woman turn for encouragement?

Before I answer that, let me tell you not to believe everything you see, hear or read, and I have an example to back up that statement. Little things like this give me hope.

It's awfully hard to live without hope

Last winter, I was working out on a treadmill at my local Planet Fitness gym. I happened to look to my right out the window, and an older gentleman in a wheelchair was struggling to get off the sidewalk. It looked like he needed to get into the parking lot to get to a ride of some kind. However, a small snowbank built up over the edge of the sidewalk and it was slowing him down.

So, I’m watching him struggle, and I can’t take it anymore, so I’m about to cancel the treadmill’s workout program and go give him some help, but someone beat me to the punch.

Here come three young males, either late teens or early 20s. They politely asked the man if they could give him a hand, and he smiled gratefully. The three strong young men all get grips on the wheelchair and lift him off the sidewalk and over the small snowbank on the edge of the lot. Off he went.

By the way, the reason I love this story is the three young men were black and the old man was white. Why is that important? Well, if you believe everything you see on the news, racial relations have never been so bad. Is it possible, that even on a small scale, real life is a little different from the sensationalist headlines?

But hope can and does dry up, and it can dry up quickly. Where do human beings turn when they’re out of hope?

A devotion from Our Daily Bread in December 1996 recapped a story told by the medical director of a clinic, who mentioned a terminally ill young man who came in for treatment. A new doctor on duty said to him casually and cruelly, “You know, don’t you, that you won’t live out the year”

As this poor young man left, he stopped by the clinic director’s desk and wept. “That man took away my hope,” he blurted out.

“He certainly did,” the director said. “Maybe it’s time we find you a new one.

Commenting on this incident, Lewis Smedes says, “Is there hope when hope is taken away? Is there hope when the situation is hopeless? That question should lead us to Christian hope because, in the Bible, hope is no longer a passion for the possible. It becomes a passion for the promise.”

Christians already have hope. The hope of Heaven and the promise of life after death. A life without the scars of sin that decimate this world and the people living in it. However, we are human, and our tanks get low. Let me offer a couple of thoughts to wrap up.

Hebrews 10:23 says, “Let us seize and hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is reliable and trustworthy and faithful [to His Word] (Amplified Bible). When all seems in doubt, you can still have hope. Hang on to that deep in your heart, even when it doesn’t seem logical to do so. He is always in control, isn’t He?

Even in the middle of the struggles and storms that feel like they’re tossing you about (and who doesn’t feel that way these days, at least a little?), set hope as your anchor. “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” (Hebrews 6:19 [NIV]. You are a ship in the middle of an ocean and in deep trouble, but instead of lashing yourself to the mast to keep from being tossed overboard, we lash ourselves to the One who walked on water and calmed the storm.