Comment by Randall Butisingh

Dear Bloggers, I urge you to read “Why Hope” Discussions with Brian Konkol – 10.

This is a brilliant treatise (which I consider a masterpiece) on one of the great virtues which has kept mankind from surrendering to adverse circumstances, which time and again threatened  to divert him from the purpose for which he was created.

The writer, a young missionary of the Lutheran Church,  Pastor Brian Konkol has accepted a call to serve among the poor and needy in South Africa, where he is not only preaching the Word but teaching and working in order to improve their lot.  I,  personally, look forward with expectation to his regular newsletters which he and sometimes his wife, a co-worker in His vineyard and a good writer also, help to produce.  These newsletters, I post in my web log for the inspiring  messages they convey, all in keeping with its aims and objectives, that in trying to help to make this world a better place.

Like the dedicated Pastor, I believe “there is a large tide of Hope rising throughout the world in “those who believe in our common Humanity” and is gaining ground against those who try to frustrate unity.

Why Hope?  As one writer puts it: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast”.  What is the meaning of Hope?  The dictionary gives it as expectation.  It is more than expectation.  It is expectation with a spiritual connotation.  Mere expectation is passive.  It can mean just sitting and waiting for something to happpen; but in Hope there is a dynamism which energises and motivates to the “boldness of action”.  Such hope, however can only come through Faith and Love..  Love always hopes, 1 Corinthians, 13; 7.Again “In His name the nations will put their Hope”. Matthew 10: 21, (spoken in fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah.

The mills of God grind slowly but very fine , and in the present crisis that has affected all the nations of the earth,  He has put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble and meek   This  is a sure sign that the God of the Good Samaritan and of the Prodigal Son is working his purpose  out, and that the time is near when men of Hope will begin to see “the woods instead of the trees”  and will join their divided links in a united chain of brotherhood that will encircle the globe.

- Randall Butisingh