A small town was about to be eliminated due to the relocation of a dam. Of course, no one knew of the proposed plans until a man was sent from the state to inform the community of what the future held. As he approached the small town, he couldn’t help but notice how neat and manicured it was. White picket fences around the homes, fresh cut lawns, flower beds. After the town meeting and a plan for a two-year relocation of the community that would move everyone to another area, he left. Upon his return a year later to check up on the progress and to respond to questions, he noticed how the once beautiful community had fallen into disrepair. Lawns unkept, fences falling, flowers dried up, etc. he then made this observation. If there’s no hope in your future, there’s no power in your present!
Hope is an indispensable part of our lives. A life without hope is hopeless. A study conducted on those that had survived the Nazi death camps during WW2 discovered that almost all the survivors had one thing in common, naked hope! That is throwing their thoughts into the future; they used hope like a magnet to bring them to safety. So what is hope? Bible scholar Joseph H. Thayer says hope is a “joyful and confident expectation.” The Bible calls hope the anchor of the soul. It goes on to call it a place of refuge, safety, and protection.
Hope is like a bicycle; a bicycle only has balance when it’s moving forward. Hope sees the future as positive and allows us to move forward. Hope causes us to walk towards the sun not away from it. Hope creates the law of attraction; we attract what we hope for. Martin Luther said, “Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.”
You can’t live without it, so get a big dose of hope!!
I want to encourage you to download my series called “Moving Life Forward.”
