"Hope," said Thales, the Greek founder of philosophy, "is the most universal thing in the world, for hope stays with those who have nothing else."

            Many today are in the grip of despair and pessimism because they have ruled out the very grounds of hope itself, which is God.  The believer's hope centers in a person, Jesus Christ, who gave to us a hope of eternal life and the assurance that there is more to life than the weary monotony of earning enough money to keep ourselves from starving and out of the rain.  Hope stems from faith, and it is to the soul of man what oxygen is to his lungs and food to his body.  Apart from hope there is no reason to live.