I don’t know where to begin. Forgive me if this writing becomes scattered and unfocused, it is truly a moment of expressing a cathartic need. (You have been warned). 
I’m seeing so many hurting people and unhealthy relationships. People are broken and scratching for contentment in one area or the other. They are working themselves into a death. I’m frustrated because church and spirituality has often promised relief and have all too often led people astray and feeling more defeated than when they started. The government could not promise spiritual relief but promised the opportunity for a better tomorrow only for that promise to be broken.
A cry for help gone seemingly unanswered has left many in despair and hopeless. I look at my personal situation and circumstances and though I have been through multiple traumatic life-changing events, I am not without hope. Hope is greater than money. Hope is better than material pacifiers. Hope is the essence of all things working out even when there is no visible or imaginable way that it could.
I hear the cry for help. I wonder to myself, when (not if) things will change? Who will experience change? Will the true leaders rise up in the church? Will integrity be brought back to community, institutions, or only individuals on a personal level? Will the genuinely courageous souls that are not without hope begin to answer the call for help with compassion and the knowledge that they are blessed and fortunate without measure? I believe they will. I believe there are those who have been chosen to be latter-day movers and shakers to answer the cry. They not only hear the cry but they have cried. They not only sense the need, but they know that even with limited resources, they have a wealth and commodity that many do not have. They have hope.
Bob Stickles
September 22, 2010
I believe it is everyone should rise up. Everyone one should lead. Everyone should make a differents. Everyone should believe that they too can make a differents.
Marsha J. O'Brien
September 24, 2010
AWESOME post. Hope is still around and it is a powerful belief! Even for those who do not have a spiritual recognition about them, hope is available to all!
We need never to give in nor give up. Even if just the next moment we can still breathe and think and have hope – that is a wonderful gift!
Blessings abundantly to you and yours. Love to you!
angel709
September 24, 2010
So very true Marsha, Thank you for your blessings. I had a hope that was almost against hope, but experience has taught me that nothing is impossible. I left a recently-bought camcorder in a rental car Wednesday afternoon. Not only was it returned to me in the car untouched, but it gave me a new appreciation that there are people still out there (not just sometimes-self pity ol’ me) that have integrity. Integrity can be contagious, and if I weren’t an honest person, having my things returned to me would’ve been an even more valuable lesson. As an honest person that has developed higher levels of integrity than I began with, it was a humbling and gracious reward.
Let us continue to show integrity and be salt and light. Many more blessings to whomever she was that blessed me with a beautiful gift of return.