Heart Hope by Olga

There is a beautiful young girl in the office next to my cubical. Our department is in an out of the way part of the building, so you only come there if you are on a mission. Some people come for the refrigerator, some for the fax machine and some to drop off papers for the boss. However there is one young man in particular who comes to see my pretty neighbor. The man has no real reason to be in our part of the building since he is not in our department, but he will come at least 2 or 3 times a day…and often times more. He will come bearing gifts, such as granola bars or leftover Halloween candy, so I have nicknamed him "Granola Guy." Or he might stop by just to show off his new snowboard or to talk about his latest adventure on the mountain. He sometimes tries to just wander by, but since there is nowhere to go, if my neighbor is not at her desk, he has to turn around and go by my desk looking dejected. What keeps this young man coming back even though he has been told tha...

Since Monday was a day of reflection, I’m still thinking about how we all need to look back not just on the men and women who have sacrificed their lives for our country, but we also need to look back on the times and people in our personal lives that have made a difference. These are the things that can give us hope in our times of trouble. If we have seen God’s faithfulness in the past, we can trust that He will be faithful to us in our current struggles. In the Bible when Joshua was leading the people into the Promised Land by crossing the parted waters of the Jordan River, he instructed one person from each of the 12 tribes to pick up a rock from the river bed. They set the stones up as a memorial so that when people saw it and asked about it, they would be told the story of how God had miraculously shown His power in guiding Israel during the time in the desert. In the Old Testament, the wise prophet Samuel set up a stone and called it Ebenezer when God came to the rescue of Israe...