I certainly Hope so....... (first word)

Good evening everyone, and welcome to this chapter. I'm honored and flattered that you would once again take time from your busy lives (especially this time of year) to visit this blog. So, let me welcome you in. Sit, relax and let me know what you want for refreshment and it'll be served right up.
In the very first post to this blog I made clear my purpose for starting and continuing this endeavor. Let me repeat it so you won't have to look all the way back to recall it. My stated purpose was/is to offer hope and encouragement to all who read. To this point I've mostly dedicated myself to letting everyone get to know me a bit. Of course there is still much most don't know. Over time though you will. I begin now mixing the chapters a bit to accomplish that.
In the last chapter I said that there were three words which I'd like to talk a bit about. This post will be on the first of those. This is something I know something about, mostly because I've been to the extreme on both sides of this word. The word for this chapter is..(drum roll)... HOPE. A very simple word which we all use pretty much daily and mostly without thinking about it. A word we tend to use rather freely. I've done a bit of research about it. The dictionaries I've consulted describe it as (I'll paraphrase a bit here) "an expectation of achieving something or of something coming to pass". I've thought long and hard about how to write this (and continue to do so) and realize that I'll have to write it from my own perspective. Hope is thought to be different things by different people. To everyone it has a different significance and value. So, from my perspective, here goes. I can think of very few things that is more important. To a person in combat it has a huge significance. I can tell you that the sound of a helicopter is like a sound from heaven itself. I can say that, to a cancer patient (been there) Hope has a vast importance. It means the continuation of life itself. I can say that to someone that's lonely it has a wonderful meaning. In that respect it springs eternal (so to speak). To someone that's watched a loved one slowly wilt and die before your eyes it has an even different value. To someone that is wrestling with a hard and difficult career it means something better at some point. To someone that's gone through a bitter divorce it means life afterward. To someone that has been so very stressed that they can barely make it from day to day hope has a very special significance. I stated a bit ago that I'd be writing this from a personal perspective since it's the only one I know. That's what I'm doing. I've had all those experiences I've described. In the year two thousand one I was going through or had just gone through many of the things I just described. It was at that time I lost all hope that anything would ever be better. I became suicidal because of that loss. I was hospitalized for a short time then began seeing a therapist and continue to do so. It's the reason I'm still here and writing this. I've come to know that to remove someones hope is to end their life. I can say with certainty that if one has no hope they won't allow themselves to continue to live. Everyone reading this can relate to some degree to what I've said. Everyone can recall times in your life when hope was dim or gone. Although that be true, only those that have been without hope can know the anguish brought on by the total loss of hope. I believe that Solomon said it best in Ecclesiastes chapter nine verse four. I won't write out the verse here so you'll have to look it up for yourselves. It says "where there is life there is hope". Also, Jeremiah said in Lamentations chapter three verses twenty one through twenty six, that we are all (whether we acknowledge it or not) totally dependent on God. Being dependent on God is what gives us eternal hope. Sorry, you'll have to look that one up too. Let's face it. Without that hope that comes from God we're all fighting a losing battle. Let me say before I stop and crawl into bed that I now have hope out the waa zoo. (that taken from the movie 'over the hedge') ( :-D ) To conclude this I'll give you something I've learned over the years. While Solomon is absolutely right that 'where there is life there's hope' the reverse of that sentence is also true. Where there is hope there's life too. Ask anyone that's lost or almost lost either. .........And so it goes...........