HOPE

Hope is the belief that your tomorrows will be better than your today or a feeling that your desire will be fulfilled.  It can be a powerful driving force in your life.  It can be the only thing that keeps you going sometimes.  Life can also be debilitating without it.  You have no direction to strive, no goal to reach, no belief things can get any better than they are right now.

I met a man this weekend that had just gotten out of prison and this week is on his way to live in a men's shelter because he has no where else to go.  He had a rough childhood with an abusive father.  He was in prison because he was hooked on drugs and did very desperate things to get more.  He wants to leave that behind and I see huge potential in this young man.  He has been clean for a year because he was in prison.  This is the bottom for him but with the right direction this can be a renewal and a rebirth for him.  This can be a new beginning.  I want to be that hope for him, I want to provide that direction and encouragement to not fall back into the same lifestyle (because that is what he knows) but to move forward with a fresh start.  With nothing else to loose he stands at a crossroads one path is difficult and unknown one path is easy and familiar.  I pray that God will provide a way for me to mentor him on the unknown path.  I want him to be able to reach up through HOPE and grab a hold of joy again to do the things with his life he wants to, to be the man God wants him to be.

It is important to me because the man I met is my foster son's dad.  We hope to adopt him soon and I know that someday my son will want to search out his birth father and I want the man he finds to be a righteous man living for God.  Pray that I can reach out to him.