A Door of Hope

A Door of Hope
by Robert Lee, Executive Director

How important is Hope? 

Seems these days that hope is becoming more and more a valuable commodity.  In the four years since I started working with Building Hope, we've taken time as a staff to ask ourselves some hard questions about what we do and what we hope to accomplish.

Often the process of questioning leads to more questions than answers, but one thing the last four years have taught me is that the people I am privileged to serve with here are the most committed, loyal, and God fearing servants I have ever met.  Their ability to keep hope alive, for the lives of the students and families we serve, and for our own spiritual walks are what keeps us going each day.  We often ask ourselves questions like...

Are we doing what we say we do?

How do we measure success?

Are we empowering or enabling?

Who are our clients?

And what is our product?

The answer to the last question, we decided, is this intagible resource we call HOPE.  Our mission is to produce hope in the lives of our students based on Jeremiah 29:11.

We know many things about hope from the Bible.  Hope is for something we cannot see--it's belief in the invisible or yet to come.  Hope does not disappoint, at least when we fix our hope firmly on what God desires for our lives.  Hope deferred is a difficult burden to carry.  And hope against hope is often the stance to which God calls us.  Hope, Faith, and Love--they are all pretty high on the eternal list.

But for us to produce hope, we need God to ultimately make a door of opportunity for each young person to acheive the goals He has for their lives.   God says He will make a door of hope in the most difficult situation.  These doors are often opened through relationships with volunteer tutors, mentors, or some connection to the community that affords our youth to see a new path out of their troubles.

You may be that door of hope that some young child needs.  As I've been serving with this group over the past four years, I've come less and less to expect some new program to answer the needs we have.  Instead, I've learned more and more that people who invest time in youth through loving relationships, are the raw materials with which hope is built.  You connect these youth to someone who loves them and to a personal walk with their loving creator, and hope, no doubt, will emerge.