This is Blog Month at Compassion International, and I am privileged to be a Compassion Blogger. Compassion International is a ministry I believe in, not only because it directly intervenes in the lives of vulnerable children in need, but because it links people to local churches where they can find more than bread and water. They can find the Bread of Life and Living Water. In this month, we work together with our blogging resources to enlist new sponsors for waiting children.

This week Compassion International asked us to choose one word and write 3 things about that one word. So here it goes …

Why HOPE matters to Compassion International

Hope is that belief that God sees our need and cares about us. I can’t imagine being without hope.  Lost. Despondent. Trying to want to try, but thinking it won’t do any good. Wondering if there’s a reason to try.  Children in places with names like Syria and Somalia and Bangkok are left without a grown up to protect and provide for them like grown ups should, and they surely must wonder if they should still try.  But hope tells them they should, and they want to.

There is good cause to hope.  To hope is to feel the inner awareness that there is a personal Creator who made me and still cares, still sees, still acts. 

 
Hope is to wait confidently in expectation that others who have found God will care about the others who haven’t.  There is cause to hope because there are so many who have so much, and surely they won’t close their eyes to the many who don’t have much at all. Because of the many who have reached for God and found Him, there is reason to hope.
 

Hope is placed in what’s beyond now. To look to future things and know there’s more than the struggle of today.  To close your eyes and wistfully wait for what’s better, what’s to come, what’s yet unrealized, what’s reserved for me and all those who long for something not so hard.  To hope is to be sure God has good things in our tomorrow and in the farthest tomorrows when we aren’t here, but we’re there with Him. It’s worth it to hope, because “here” is not forever, and forever will be better. Children need to know this when they hunger, when they hurt, when they find out the world has evil in it, and when they pray.

Compassion International is committed to helping children know God sees their need, to know that others will respond, and to know God has a good future for them. Compassion is a way to deliver hope to children who may not otherwise find it.

Yes, HOPE is what every child needs.