Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Friday September 7, 2007

When we read of despair in prisons or ghettos, we are not surprised, but to the average person the thought of despair permeating a Beverly Hills Mansion is somehow absurd and often though unstated at least a little bit fair. Anyone with all that money should earn it with a little pain.

On the opposite side of the coin we find hope, which is more often than not found in abundance in Beverly Hills Mansions, nice suburban homes, and especially in the humble homes of the downtrodden masses. Hope is even found in abundance inside prison walls and on death row.

My point in the above paragraphs is to point out that neither despair nor hope has a natural external environment, but universally resides in the human heart by choice. I will give you that sometimes we make our choice to hope or despair when we are faced with situations, such the one I face too often concerning going to a home and being served the best meatloaf in all of Christendom. Please!! Forty five years of this quest has brought me to despair even at the mention of this mythical treat. The Great Blonde will try to bring me up from the throes of despair with the hopeful thought, "Well, I know Larry, but this may be the one. There must be a truly great meatloaf somewhere on earth. Perhaps it will be found in the Himalayas." The poor misguided child.

Hope is usually associated with more noble quests than finding a good meatloaf. I receive letters each week from people living in the most hopeless of life's situations and their letters brim with hope. Hope for an overturn of sentence, of the outlawing of the death penalty, of someone somewhere grasping the enormity of the injustice committed against them, of the system being used as a tool of vengeance. I must point out that in many cases the atrocities listed are more common than you may think. Others, living in the same circumstance ask for hope in their heart that they may live a life to be emulated under the worst of human conditions. They live to "bloom where they are planted."

The four epistles written by Paul during his first imprisonment, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon are bustling with hope and this hope in the heart of the prisoner, Paul, leaped from the pages and set the heart of those who heard the reading or were able to read them for themselves on fire. It is not by accident that the most hopeful of Paul's letters come from the inner sanctum of the horrible pagan prisons of the time. True hope is not susceptible to the rigors of environment. Only those who have laid on a cold concrete floor, who have existed each day knowing the noose, the stake, the chair or the "humane" injection awaits and did this with an Amazing Grace song in their hearts know the truth expressed by Solzenitzin as he thanked God for rotting straw on a prison floor as through this dehumanizing situation God brought hope to his heart. The heart filled with hope in God cannot be extinguished by rotting straw on a prison floor or carpets from exotic places on the marble floor of exquisite mansions.

Hope is good for all seasons and all places for all time.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2007 Use with credit.

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