Thrive & Flourish预览

Choose Hope 

Stories of hope inspire us to never give up. By the end of the Holocaust, six million Jewish men, women, and children had perished in ghettos, mass shootings, in concentration camps and extermination camps. More recently in Rwanda, hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered in the desire to intentionally annihilate "the other".  

It is easy to forget that behind every statistic there is a real life story of trauma, loss, anger and despair, the effects of which frequently continue to be felt and re-lived by future generations. Today across our world, there are millions of children who are growing up in the shadow of devastating experiences. Yet, incredibly many of these young people are the ones who are committed to bringing healing, new hope, and new life out of the darkest situations. 

Hope believes that there is a future; that better things are possible even in the most challenging of circumstances. Through simply offering our hearts to this possibility of a new and radically different world, many opportunities will appear for us to actively demonstrate and spread hope. 

A sense of hopelessness can impact anyone at any time in their life.  Today, we can choose to notice the people, past and present, who have struggled or continue to struggle without hope for the future. Today, we can choose to sit with them for a time and be present to the reality of their pain and suffering. Today, we can choose to notice our own pain and suffering. Today, we can choose to ask God to step into the pain with us, knowing He will never stop loving us no matter what we face.

Prayer: Dear Lord, thank you that you are the God of all hope and that all things work together towards your higher purposes and plans. You bring hope in the seemingly darkest of situations. Help us to draw strength from stories of hope and continue to grow our trust in your heart and your character, as the God of love and hope.