A Fragile Hope

I started my blog in 2012.  The reason behind it was, and still is, to talk about things that are beautiful and uplifting.  I am a person with a positive mindset.  I have a firm belief that there is always a way.  All we have to do is to keep looking until we find it.  I try to post every Monday and Thursday.  Yesterday, however, I sat at my computer and I had no words.  I could not think of anything positive or encouraging to share with you.  The outlook seemed so dim, so utterly hopeless.  What was there to say?  Every word I could think of sounded too frivolous to pen down.  There was devastation in every image flashed on television.  People were hurting.  They are overwhelmed and traumatized.  Their situation is dire.  The reality of no supplies, no food, and demolished infrastructure is devastating.

Through the day, however, little rays of light started to break through the dense smoke of near apocalypse.  Little slivers of hope. People were standing up.  They were taking hands and uniting.  They started cleaning up.  People are volunteering their time.  With every piece of debris they are picking up they are rebuilding and healing a broken country.  Communities are mobilizing and forming human barricades against criminals and looters. Images of people of all denominations praying together are taking the place of the footages of looting.  People are donating food, medicine, and other essential supplies.  Convoys are gathering to transport the goods to the affected areas.

I thank everybody who is involved with the clean-up and restoration of our country.  Men and women who don't turn a blind eye, and who don't wait for somebody else to solve the problem.  I thank the Lord for everybody who decides not to run away, but to stay to rebuild and restore hope.  It will not be an easy road ahead, we will all bear the brunt of this week's events, but in the end, it will be worth it.  We shall rise again.

I leave you with this thought: 

Evil will never triumph as long as there are good men and women willing to do whatever it takes to uphold and restore what is good and honourable.

(The inspiration for this thought I have taken from this quote by utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill, who delivered an 1867 inaugural address at the University of St. Andrews and stated:

 “Let not anyone pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”)

May the Lord be with you, be blessed.