Monday, April 26, 2021

Clark McCurdy

Hope

Desmond Tutu once said “ Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”

Well who in the past have had to have hope to survive perhaps? Let’s look at Saul of Tarsus. He was struck blind on the road because of his pursuit of the Apostles and believers in Jesus. He languished in his house wondering why he was dealt such a hand until he came to think of believing in God. Slowly his vision returned as he began to prophesy his beliefs. He became a saint before passing on. Hope brought him to God, step by step.

When I went to Viet Nam there were already POWs in North Vietnam and in the pens of the jungles with unknown release times as there always are. They had to keep up hope that they would survive to go home and that the family would remain loyal to them. The latter became the more important as time went on. Sadly the loyalty factor became a reality as they eventually came home. I had to have hope as my friends died as their planes crashed under fire or weather affected their flight preventing safe enroute navigation. War takes a severe toll on you in the dark hours of the night as you lie in bed thinking of the day to come. I was among the lucky ones to come home to a wife and family because I had seen the safe ending of my term in the war zone and how to hopefully get there.

We as a society are coming thru the same stresses as the COVID-19 bug is slowly leaving.. We did isolate in our homes and wonder what our individual outcomes would become as the year wore on. Now many of us have had our shot(s) and we look forward to seeing this disease slowly depart our shores. We have had to survive on hope, to see there would be light at the end of the tunnel in the form of vaccination shots.

Perhaps the “Light” of hope has helped get us thru.