Ecclesiastes 9:4 “Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!”
I must admit, there are times when hope seems hard to come by. Discouragement can arrive in our lives as fast a phone call or a wrong lane-change on a highway. Life can seem so precarious if we start to focus on how easily life can implode at a moments notice. However, if we look to some stories in scripture, it seems that God does incredible things in the most hopeless of situations. I think of the Roman soldier who thought his son to be dead, took only the words of Jesus with him and he saw his son alive and well. The widow and her son in the middle of drought, preparing to die see the hand of God stretch their food so that they could live.
I think of people who leave Churches, jobs, friends, spouses and children because life got difficult, I wonder if salvation was only a moment away? Maybe God might be telling you to stick it out and trust him with your situation. It may not be flashy, but you just might be in the center of a divine encounter with the almighty God. Hope allows us the privilege to believe in a God who cares about even the hairs on our head, no matter how many or few they might be.
The writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us, if your still reading this,  your alive! Which means there is still hope…