Be a voice of hope.

 

A dear friend reminded me about story I told a few years ago. It seems to fit our current situation.

Be a voice of hope: 

A few years back a devastating earthquake killed 30,000 people in Armenia.  Minutes after the tragedy, a father ran to his son’s school building and found it completely collapsed. Remembering that his son’s classroom was in the rear corner of the building, he ran over to it and began digging, pulling away the rubble with his hands.

Other parents, weeping nearby, tried to stop him, saying, “It’s too late! They’re all dead! It’s too late!” Even the police tried to dissuade him. But he kept on digging. He dug for 36 hours without stopping. In the 38th hour he heard a voice, the father screamed, “Armand!” The boy shouted back, “Dad!” Then began an incredible conversation; the boy shouted up from the rubble: “Dad! There are 14 of us down here. I told them not to worry. I told them that you’d come.”

There are so many parallels in this story with our world right now.  The world is full of people like the ones in this story. There are people like the grief-stricken parents standing around the collapsed school after the earthquake. They see our world in a state of moral and spiritual collapse. They see nothing but a mountain of crime, war, drugs, illness, immorality, corruption and disrespect for all forms of life.  So many people have given up and only stand around, lamenting the situation.

There are also people like the children trapped inside a world that feels like moral and spiritual rubble.  They feel like theirs is a helpless situation.  They see no light. The only thing that can give them hope is people like little Armand and his father – people of faith.  Hopefully, people like us. We are called to be people who like Armand’s father see the same mountain of moral and spiritual collapse but refuse to give up. We are called to be like little Armand and have faith that Jesus is coming to save us.   We are called to people who keep working at their faith until we bring light into the darkness.

The prophet Isaiah said, “Let us walk in the light of the Lord!” Saint Paul said, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Put on the armor of light.” Hopefully, this story is an invitation to us to do this, to become like Armand and his father, to be voices of hope in our world. People are hurting right now, we are called to be a voice of hope!