To hope – Esperer – Hoffen - të shpresojnë – الأمل - si ay u rajaynayaa

I don’t know how you have been taking in the current events regarding the mass influx of migrants.  Here is Europe there is no way that one cannot be aware of the issue. We see the news about boats carrying human cargo stranded for days at sea… ships sinking with hundreds of migrants on board… smugglers abandoning their cargo to “chance”… countries finding mass graves of people who have been trafficked and then left to die… adults, children, elderly, who are starving, traumatized, with nothing left…

Khayelitsha ( Xhosa for New Home), township in South Africa

… and yet the migrants keep coming, they keep trying, they keep going on, taking the next what might be fatal step, all because they hope to find peace somewhere, and they hold on to that small ounce of HOPE.

I saw it in the eyes of the woman I had breakfast with yesterday morning at the refugee center in my neighboring town.   

A new friend from the refugee center near us

 Hope - for something better.  She left Macedonia with her husband and their little boy, along with about 20 others, crammed into a truck set for Germany. Germany was the country in which they hoped to find what they didn’t have back home.  She said there was nothing for her and her family in Macedonia - no work, no suitable place to live, no hope for the future of their little boy.  I looked around the simple “common room” at the refugee center we were meeting in for a breakfast get together with some of the refugee women, and thought that this wasn’t really great either.  However, for this young mother sitting next to me, it was more than satisfactory.  They had food, safety, a warm place to live, the company of others in the same plight and… HOPE.

My son Michael texted me last night with a disappointed message.  An important scholarship he had applied for had sent him an email informing him that he was disqualified from the scholarship because his file was incomplete; the school transcripts were missing. Oh, no!  He worked so hard to get it all in and he was quite certain it was. I starting praying and I texted Grandma, our prayer warrior, to pray as well that if they did have it they would find it,  somewhere.  He called them and told them that he was pretty sure that his college had sent it all in.  30 minutes later they called him back and said they had found it.  It had been misplaced. What a sigh of relief - not because he received the scholarship, but because there was still HOPE that he might.

In the Bible, in the book of Luke there is a story of a blind man who sits on the side of the road begging. When he hears that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by he is filled with HOPE and starts yelling out: “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” 
 Oh boy, how many times have I felt like that blind beggar.  We probably all have if we are honest.

I know - I can’t compare my degree of “despair” to his, or to the refugee lady I sat next too yesterday, or anything remotely comparable to those thousands of migrants stranded at sea.  But I do know what it feels like to hold on to a little bit of hope. To not give up trying… or fighting… or running… or enduring… because of the potential of something: new, better, peace, or joy that I am hoping is around the next bend in the road…

I sometimes wonder how people keep on going in desperate situations when they don’t believe in a God who is sovereign, who has promised to walk through those desperate moments with them, and in whom they can put their trust. It would seem to me that just to hope isn’t enough. Hope alone has been shown to increase your chance of achieving something better because of the power of positive thinking. But is it enough?

Phil and Tammy at Cape Good Hope ( South Africa)

I’m not a theologian, and don’t aspire to be. I also don’t have many answers about the reason for so much suffering in the world. But like that blind beggar I am so thankful that I can cry out to Jesus, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me…” 

… to Jesus who sees me, who loves me, who walks with me and has my life in His sight. …to have mercy on these unjust situations in the world, on us, on me… on you.