I heard recently of a tribe that has a member whose role it is to always maintain and inspire hope among tribal members. I haven't been able to verify if it's true, but just imagine if it is. Think of what it would be like to have someone you could go to in dark, trying times knowing they would help you find light.
I want that job! Just think of the good we could do if we made it our mission to live in and share hope!
Hope is a powerful thing. It acknowledges how hard things are, but gives us a reason to keep pushing through. Hope is the thread we can cling to and follow when we're overwhelmed, exhausted, or discouraged. It is the light at the end of the tunnel. Hope is the great motivator.
In a recent address, Jeffrey R. Holland said, "Indeed, if we ever lose hope, we lose our last sustaining possession. It was over the very gate of hell that Dante wrote a warning to all those traveling through his Divina Commedia: 'Abandon all hope,' he said, 'ye who enter here.' Truly when hope is gone, what we have left is the flame of the inferno raging on every side." Hope, Holland said, is "among our most indispensable virtues."
He also used a phrase I fell in love with the instant I heard it: relentless hope.
In the following story from 2015, a seven-year-old girl named Sailor demonstrates what relentless hope might look like.
"Last January, seven-year-old Sailor Gutzler and her family were flying from Florida to Illinois in a private airplane. Sailor’s father was at the controls. Just after nightfall, the aircraft developed mechanical problems and crashed in the pitch-dark hills of Kentucky, upside down in very rough terrain. Everyone but Sailor died in the accident. Her wrist was broken in the crash. She suffered cuts and scrapes and had lost her shoes. The temperature was 38 degrees Fahrenheit (or 3 degrees Celsius) —it was a cold, rainy Kentucky winter’s night — and Sailor was wearing only shorts, a T-shirt, and one sock.
She cried out for her mother and father, but no one answered. Summoning every ounce of courage, she set off barefoot across the countryside in search of help, wading through creeks, crossing ditches, and braving blackberry briars. From the top of one small hill, Sailor spotted a light in the distance, about a mile away. Stumbling through the darkness and brush toward that light, she eventually arrived at the home of a kind man she had never met before who sprang to her care. Sailor was safe. She would soon be taken to a hospital and helped on her way to recovery.
Sailor survived because she saw a light in the distance and fought her way to it —notwithstanding the wild countryside, the depth of the tragedy she faced, and the injuries she had sustained. It is hard to imagine how Sailor managed to do what she did that night. But what we do know is that she recognized in the light of that distant house a chance for rescue. There was hope." (told by Whitney L. Clayton, April 2015)
When life is challenging and we are struggling to keep going on, I hope we can remember this - "We did not come this far only to come this far." (Judith Mahlangu)
My friend, hold on. Press on. Hope on.