Hope

I guess this post is coming from some things I've been thinking about recently... so bear with me if it's not following an outline, doesn't have a funnel-shaped introduction paragraph, and doesn't end with a restatement of the main point. (Forgive the harking back to English 102!)

In my field of work, I have the chance to work with people. It's one of the best jobs a person can have - to spend their time trying to help people. Granted, I'm sure most jobs can be somehow linked back to helping people. A fast food restaurant helps people get a full stomach (and probably a lot more than that, but I will let others expand on that one). A janitor helps people keep in a sanitary environment. But my job is to help people better their lives, and it's somehow a perfect fit for me.

Yet in the task of helping people and working with others, I'm finding that hope is too often missing. And it saddens me. I go in with the hope of making a difference, and then I hear someone say the person is just going to go right back and do the same thing again. And they might. I mean, that's human nature. Think about it. Haven't you ever come to the point that there was something you said you wouldn't do, or you were going to limit something... and then you turn around and find yourself doing what you just decided not to do? Come on. Admit it to yourself. You have done it. I have too.

This is where things could get depressing. I mean, if we've just admitted human nature is to do over and over what we don't want to do - or shouldn't do - why not give up. And I'll have to admit, I don't have all the answers to this problem.... but I do know one thing. And it's the most important thing. Hope can only come one way, and that's through Jesus. That might sound cliché. But it's the only true answer to getting out of the cycle of relapsing into old habits.

He's my hope. My hope for myself, my hope for the people I'm trying to help, for you.

I wish I had more time to write more of my thoughts on this... I'm just hitting the tip of the iceberg. Maybe there will come a part 2 after I've had some more time to muse on this subject. Feel free to add some comments below and throw in your two cents worth...