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A story is told of self– made millionaire Eugene Land, who greatly changed the lives of a class of 11 and 12 year olds in East Harlem, New York. My Lang was asked to speak to 59 year seven pupils. He wondered what he could say to inspire the disaffected youngsters most of whom would drop out of school. He needed to say something that captured and held the attention of the predominantly black and Puerto Rican children. Scrapping his notes he decided to speak to them from the heart. “Stay at school,” he urged, “and I’ll help pay the college tuition for everyone of you.” At that moment the lives of these students changed. For the first time they had hope. One of the beneficiaries of Eugene Land’s promise said, “I had something to look forward to, something waiting for me. It was a golden feeling.” Nearly 90% of that class went on to graduate from high school.
It is a wonderful thing to impart hope to the hopeless and despairing. Quite often we can do it by showing we care. The great Quaker reformer, Elizabeth Fry, used to visit the ships that transported women convicts to Australia. In 1823 she pressed into the hands of Hester a pound of lump sugar and half a pound of tea. Except for Mrs Fry Hester hadn’t a friend in the world. But Mrs Fry’s kindness and concern gave her hope and with it the determination to start a new life in New South Wales. In 1845—22 years later—Esther wrote to Mrs Fry to tell her that she had been married 20 years—had plenty of pigs and fowls—bought her tea by the chest - and still covered her bed with the patchwork quilt she had made from the pieces of cloth given her by the Quaker ladies when she embarked. But Elizabeth Fry had given Esther something far more precious than pins, needles and scraps of cloth—she had given her hope in her darkest hour. On Wednesday, Feb 24, 2010 the Daily Telegraph published an obituary of Professor Fred Bachrach. As a young man he was a Japanese prisoner of war. He and three others managed to build a radio from aircraft parts. Unfortunately it was discovered and the four men were beaten and interrogated before being marched to the ‘oven’ on the edge of their camp. This was a 10ft-square corrugated iron hut which had to be entered by a small hatch. Inside it was baking hot and completely dark. The prisoners received one small bowl of rice a day between them, and were told to be silent or risk further beatings. Bachrach remembered shouting, “No, no, no, no” and banging his head on the ground in despair. He then felt one of his hands being turned upright, and a fingernail scratching a long line across the palm followed by a short one at right angles to make the sign of the cross. “That gesture,” he would recall, “made me feel that I was not quite god forsaken.” It gave him hope. Nothing gives me more hope than the cross of Jesus. Paul said in his letter to the Romans: If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him graciously give us all things? Jesus sacrificial death on the cross shows how much God cares for us.
Christians have something to look forward to, something waiting for them. It is a golden feeling.
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