Christmas :: A season for Hope in a Climate of Hopelessness

I am going to get straight to the point. I am normally the last one to jump on anyone’s bandwagon about anything. But I make an exception when the bandwagon concerns matters vital to that person’s life and even more so when his or her bandwagon concerns issues that will negatively impact the lives of my family and friends. In the past several years, I have traveled the country extensively, speaking weekly to crowds numbering thousands of people. I have been in contact with thousands more through email, twitter and facebook. Never in my life have I been exposed to the hopelessness in the hearts and minds of so many people as I have been this past year. The root of these feelings is embedded in the pessimism over the condition of our nation.
There is no need to remind any of you of the serious economic woes that have befallen our great nation or the vital concern for our troops fighting in foreign lands. They are all too familiar to many of us who have been impacted by these realities. The great majority of our citizens have very little control over the outcome of these matters. If you lose your job and live in a city where the unemployment rate is hovering at 26%, there is very little you can do to become gainfully employed. And so the story goes.
I can remember in years back, there was always a sense among those I was in contact with that the trying times and struggles our nation was encountering would pass, that the leaders of our nation would find a way to pull us through. There was hope. But today, I am hearing something different from so many. There is a deep sense of uncertainty as to the direction this country is heading towards. I am hearing from an overwhelming majority of people that the deficit is unsustainable and will one day cause this nation to be at the call of the government of China. That the new healthcare reform legislation will bankrupt our country and seriously impact the quality of healthcare we receive. That the war in Afghanistan will not produce a victory for America and will serve only to make our enemies more determined to disrupt and eventually destroy our quality of life.
Sadly, the confidence in our leadership to solve these serious problems has all but eroded, and I am talking about all our leaders. Funny how no one is blaming Republicans or Democrats anymore. People are expressing a bipartisan loss of confidence in our leaders across the board. And honestly, who can blame them? Lying from our elected leaders is accepted and dismissed as “politics as usual.” Campaign promises that led to the election of our leaders are routinely broken and seldom are those elected officials held accountable. People are no longer surprised to see a congressman or governor being led away in handcuffs for abusing the authority granted them by the people. Such breaches of trust are no longer shocking. In short, there is a lack of confidence in America today and without confidence, hope erodes. Regardless of what the polls are saying from one day to the next, hope for a better America in years to come is eroding, my friends. That has been my experience in this past year and I do not live in an ivory tower, the white house or the Russell senate building.
I believe I have been given a new purpose in life. That is to encourage all of you who are feeling desperate and hopeless in the knowledge that there is always hope when hope is well placed. When you set your life’s priorities straight and know what the “end game” for your life is you can find that it is achievable one hundred percent of the time, regardless of what is going on around you. I have discovered that, my friends. I have been through some very tough times in my life, experienced struggles that, at the time, appeared to be insurmountable. I have experienced hopelessness and how it feels to desperately want to be hopeful. I am not ashamed to tell you that when I had no one or nothing to place my hope in, I turned to God. When I had no other options, I placed my hope in my creator. Relief from the hopelessness I felt was instant! The restoral process in my life was not. I still struggled, sometimes mightily, but always with hope for a better life. Eventually, the hope turned into a reality and my life was restored. A heck of a lot differently than I ever thought it would be, and thankfully, so much better than I could have hoped for.
I am not trying to persuade any of you to believe what I believe. It’s not my job to convert people. My purpose is to provide encouragement by sharing the knowledge I have obtained through my life’s experiences. We all need hope. And I have found that when all else appears to be failing us, we can place our hope in a God who wants us even when we don’t want Him.
I am hopeful, my friends, that regardless of what the future holds we all can come out on top. I have the utmost confidence in my leader. There is no better time to have hope then Christmas. To some of you reading this, the 25th of December holds no more significance than ground hogs day. For those of you in need of hope, I can tell you December 25th is the most hopeful day of this year and in every year to come.
Be Blessed!