His words broke my heart into a million pieces. “They don’t have any hope.”
Josh, a dreamer in Baltimore, was talking about the people in his neighborhood. He was talking about the prostitutes and drug addicts and the people who live next door – right here in America. He was contrasting the people he knows in Haiti. He said, “Even though they are in a pretty hopeless situation, the Haitians are really hopeful.” He went on to say, “The people in my neighborhood, even though they really have a lot of reason to hope, they live as if there isn’t any.”
Hope is the fuel that give dreams life.
Without hope, dreams are dead.
Without hope, dreams are dead.
We talked about how hard it is to bring the love of Jesus to the hopeless in America. It seems people lose all their hope when they stop believing in the American Dream. Yet the Haitians, who don’t have the American Dream to hold, have dignity and hope in something greater. Maybe hoping in the American Dream isn’t where we should place our hope?
We didn’t have time to resolve the issue. But, I did take away something beautiful from our time together.
Josh has hope. So Josh is doing something about it. He has joined with a few others who also have hope and are living in community in their community and reaching out to the hopeless. He said at first he saw nothing happen at all. But, they kept hoping. And over the last few years, they are seeing more and more people coming out of the darkness and into the light of hope and love and grace.
Tifany and Leeza have hope too. The light of God’s love shown so brightly from their faces, I felt their warmth all day. There is hope and it looks like three young world changers who look a lot like this:
I was forever changed by our encounter in the coolest coffee shop in Baltimore. Thank you Josh, Leeza, and Tifany for hoping in dreams.
Should we sink our hope in the American Dream? What happens if the American Dream fails us?
I love America. I love being American. I love Americans. But, I think I will sink my precious hope into the soil of something bigger.
“[Praise to God for a Living Hope] Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” 1 Peter 1:3 NIV
