It wasn’t until the visiting teacher got outside the boy’s room that she realized it was located in the hospital’s burn unit. No one had prepared her to find a young boy horribly burned and in great pain. She felt that she couldn’t just turn and walk out, so she awkwardly stammered, “I’m the hospital teacher, and your teacher sent me to help you with nouns and adverbs.”
The next morning a nurse on the burn unit asked her, “What did you do to that boy?” Before she could finish a profusion of apologies, the nurse interrupted her: “You don’t understand. We’ve been very worried about him, but ever since you were here yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back, responding to treatment. It’s as though he’s decided to live.”
The boy later explained that he had completely given up hope until he saw that teacher. It all changed when he came to a simple realization. With joyful tears he expressed it this way: “They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?”
We all have dark moments in our lives from time to time. But we should remember that just because we enter into a dark period, we don’t have to give up hope.
Centuries ago, the prophet Isaiah declared to the people of God: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them has light shined.”
Such words of hope! It was this promise from God, spoken through the prophet, that gave the people hope. This was the ember that nothing could extinguish. The light of God’s promise was kept alive within them.
If you seem to have little or no hope in your life, it would be good to try to remember there is always reason for hope, because you are a precious treasure of God, and he would not have sent his Son to this world if there were no hope for it, or you, or me, would he? In Jesus Christ, he provides his love and joy.
In the midst of despair, hardship, or devastating conditions of life, there is always the hope of Jesus Christ to which you can cling. He is a light that enters into any darkness.
