Hopelessly hopeful

by Tami Rudkin
Wednesday, April 30, 2008 11:00 AM MDT

Have you ever been in a job where you work and work and work and it seems to get you nowhere? What about a marriage? You give and give and nothing changes?

Or, you pray and pray, and your child still is incorrigible and blatantly disrespectful?

It’s exhausting to live in these kinds of situations. You usually don’t sleep well, and if you don’t medicate yourself with alcohol or drugs (and many do), then you may be doing it with food or TV. You might describe yourself as sad, or angry or depressed.

Perhaps what you are really feeling is hopeless. Hopelessness is almost paralyzing. It the belief, something you see in your imagination, that life is bad and it can’t possibly get better. The Bible says that when hope is deferred, or not near, the heart grows sick.

Have you ever felt that way? Are you feeling that way now?

Take heart. There is something you can do to start dispelling this darkness that has settled in around your mind.

No one has felt more despaired, more defeated, more desperate than WWII prisoners of war. Imprisoned, beaten, starved and humiliated, most of them felt helpless and hopeless.

Elmer Bendiner tells a remarkable story of a B-17 bomber that flew a mission over Germany toward the end of the war.

The plane was hit several times, and some of those hits were in the fuel tank. The bomber didn’t explode, and by a miracle was able to land.

During inspection, it was discovered that there were 11 unexploded 20-millimeter shells in the fuel tank alone! The shells were carefully dismantled.

To everyone’s amazement, the shells were empty of explosives. Inside one of the shells was a note written in Czech. It read, “This is all we can do for you now.”

In a completely hopeless situation, working in a German munitions factory, one man or woman, did his part to make a difference.

When that person left out the explosives on that assembly line, he became a player in the greatest war on Earth. He made a difference.

I would bet my two front teeth (and they’re worth a pretty penny) that he was not only a light in his particularly dark world, but that he was not unduly depressed.

Why? It was because he was doing one thing, just one thing, to change the outcome of a terribly bad situation.

And, if you’re feeling hopeless, like you can’t see a way out of a seriously bad situation, do one good thing today. That’s right, just one.

Stop talking and listen instead.

Give a compliment.

Buy lunch for a co-worker.

Write a note to your child about the day she was born.

Thank your pastor for all his work.

Smile at the overworked single mom behind the counter.

Turn off the TV for an hour and clean a room in your house.

Write a prayer for someone who is making your life miserable.

Give a little extra and do your best on an assigned project.

Hope is the belief that life can be better. Sometimes, when the darkness has made everything distorted and difficult to define, we must make a decision.

We must decide to do one right thing, day after day, so that we can push back the darkness that threatens to envelope us.

I’m hopelessly hopeful for you today … go on out into your world and do one (or maybe two) right things. It could change the outcome of your future.

(Larry and Linda Kloster sponsor this column.)

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