I am in love with HOPE

Let me tell you about my day. It started with a movie and ended with a hurting young girl. And hope.

It was my first day off in a long time. If I wasn't working I was driving kids around. But this day I was AT HOME. And it felt good.

After the usual cleaning and little jobs around the house I settled down to watch a movie I had rented from the Library that was over due. It was titled Have A Little Faith, based on the book from Mitch Albom.

Here is a blurb about the book, and ultimately the movie from Albom's website.

Have A Little Faith begins with an unusual request: an 82-year-old rabbi from Albom’s old hometown asks him to deliver his eulogy.  

Feeling unworthy, Albom insists on understanding the man better, which throws him back into a world of faith he’d left years ago. Meanwhile, closer to his current home, Albom becomes involved with a Detroit pastor – a reformed drug dealer and convict – who preaches to the poor and homeless in a decaying church with a hole in its roof. 

Moving between their worlds, Christian and Jewish, African-American and white, impoverished and well-to-do, Mitch observes how these very different men employ faith similarly in fighting for survival: the older, suburban rabbi, embracing it as death approaches; the younger, inner-city pastor relying on it to keep himself and his church afloat.

If you haven't heard of it before feel free to check out this little video clip from Mitch Albom talking about the book and then reading the first mesmerizing pages. (scroll down the page a little way)

The movie is an interesting one that I enjoyed a lot. It isn't family friendly in the sense that you would want your young children watching it. However I still give it a high recommendation. It was aired as a Hallmark TV movie a few years back. There are a few videos and trailers on YouTube if you are interested.

However the movie is not the reason I am writing. Instead I want to share with you what happened when I had to pause the movie to answer my phone.

There is a young woman my daughter knows that is going through a hard time. Family issues, boyfriend issues and the like but she is handling it all in an unhealthy way. That afternoon I paused my movie to receive a phone call from my daughter asking if this girl could stay with us that night as she had nowhere to go. I agreed hesitantly.

I resumed my movie only to be interrupted a few minutes later by the mother informing me her daughter was on suicide watch and did I mind that? Soon my afternoon was taken up with phone calls to the High School Resource worker, our local Family and Social Services and the concerned mother.

I began to fear for what I had gotten my family into. After I received my last phone call I hit my knees in prayer. Only God knew what our evening was about to transpire into. I prayed for the young woman too and the dark place she'd found herself in. I thought of myself at her age and drew so many parallels.

But God is good.

He is faithful to help those who call upon His name.

He did a miracle in my life and he could do it in hers.

I returned to my movie to catch the happily ever after ending as is crucial to all Hallmark Movies.  But it was the last line of the film that actually moved my spirit. As the movie wrapped up and the main character, Mitch Albom gives his final thoughts he says as his last words:

I am in love with hope.

Me too.  It turns out our evening was uneventful, the young gal went off to school with my kids the next morning and met with all the official people she needed to after her morning classes.  But as she left our house she hugged me and thanked me for giving her a place to stay and in my mind I replied. "I am in love with hope."

Whatever you are facing today may you find these words etched somewhere in your spirit. Hope is a powerful thing. God is good at His job of redeeming lives. No matter where you are or what you are facing ... hang on to hope. He will see you through.