A Practical Example of Hope

This post is a bit different from my usual posts.  Yesterday I joined a group of folks who committed to a challenge from Jeff Goins (jeff@goinswriter.com) to write a minimum of 500 words per day for the next 31 days.  At this moment, this feels like a significant challenge to my ability and perseverance.

Here’s where hope enters in.  I fervently desire to communicate with folks concerning the purpose and promise of hope.  To put it another way, I am eager to have conversations with folks using the following statement as the focal point of our dialogue – “every life should have a noble purpose”.

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There Is Hope For You

 

There is little hope in life without self-discipline, purpose, and intentionality/effort.  The amount of hope we live into is in direct proportion to how committed we become to discipline, purpose, and effort in our lives.   In living into these three conditions, we acknowledge some discomfort will come our way.  That discomfort lessens as we become actively involved in living a life that is guided by a noble      purpose.

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Hope in the Darkness

Dec 21, 2016 is the shortest day of this year – the winter solstice.

It is also obviously the longest night.  Some traditions mark this day as a day to remember loved ones who have passed away or to mourn or grieve hurts and abuses.  Some traditions mark this day as one of the days of Advent, a time of preparation for the coming of Christmas, the birth of the Messiah.

Regardless of your tradition or your observance of the longest night of the year, the sun will rise on December 22 – or at least it has every year so far.  It’s a good bet that whatever else may happen on December 22, the sun will indeed rise.

Sometimes that’s all the hope we get –  the sun will rise again another day.

It takes very little faith to hope and believe that the sun will rise, doesn’t it?  So perhaps we ought to consider other sources or reasons for hope to accompany the fact that the sun will rise.

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Living with Hope Will Make You Worth Remembering

art-1295282_640“Nothing’s so Sacred as Honor and Nothing’s So Loyal as Love.”  Wyatt Earp (1848-1929)

 

 

How many people have lived and died since humankind first walked on earth?  Why do we know the names and stories of some while others have slipped away unnoticed?  Why isn’t every life remembered?

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The Death of a Young Woman

sir-winston-churchill-396973_640“We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.”  (Sir Winston Churchill)

A young woman I know lost her sister to suicide.  There was no indication life had taken such a complete turnaround, a turnaround that was unbearable.

The family was crushed in their grief.  Sorrow was their only companion.

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Every Life Should Have a Noble Purpose

 bob-dylan-63158_640“You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die, only how you are going to live.”

(Joan Baez, song writer and singer)

 

For the first 48 years I believed I was living.  For the next 20 years, I realized I had been dead for the first 48.  Now at 68 and just retired, I choose to live with purpose.

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The Tree of Life

Hope deferred makes the heart sick but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life. (Proverbs 13:12)

This tree design is carved on the tombstone of some unknown individual. They dream no more.  Was their hope ended too?

tombstone-1541070_640Perhaps we can’t agree on the origin or value of hope, but even the most jaded members of humankind dream.  We dream because we wish to possess, capture or covet some outcome – success, happiness, riches, admiration, love, power, just to suggest a few.  Dreams release us for a time from the reality in which we find ourselves.

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Hope and Purpose – The Bridge

despair-513529_640solution-1783776_640He lived an imperfect life. That led him to find a noble purpose, a purpose for which he would give his life.  This kind of personal transformation can be the basis for hope even in the life of an imperfect, rebellious individual.  Where we begin our life’s journey and where it ends offers each of us time in which to grow and in which to find a purpose, a noble purpose.

 

              Every life should have a noble purpose.

That belief began to work in me when I was just a child.  I heard a scripture written by a follower of Jesus.  That follower was going blind.  He would be jailed for his faith, he would suffer greatly, and he would be left to die alone.  That man died not knowing how important his words and the witness of his life would become.

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Hope, Peace, a Good Night’s Sleep

stress-1277561_640

“If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.”

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)

I chose this particular quote because I am intrigued by the writer’s use of the plural form of the noun hope.  So often hope is defined as a single concept. In fact, our lives are full of many hopes, hopes that comfort us when our hearts are breaking or hopes that sustain us even when our hearts and our bodies are just plain worn out from the struggles we experience in our daily living.

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The Truth Will Set You Free

scorpion-651142_640Several years ago I was given a book titled, The 2548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said.  When I am stuck for a creative thought or inspiration or both, I grab that book off the shelf and open it up.  Last night I did just that.  I opened the book to a random page, item number 2069.  The quote I stumbled upon was attributed to Josh Billings (1818-1885). He wrote, “There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can’t tell the truth without lying.”  Good advice and a warning for those of you who read blogs.  Let the reader beware!

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