the Thing with feathers that perches in the soul

Life is a series of promotions from one set of routine to another. Remember the time when our routine comprised of only nap time, playtime, and mealtime? Then it included school time and break time, then gradually work time.

And we wonder why we spend a lifetime going through the motions, like the goods in a factory going through the conveyor belts. The outcome is generic. Every prince and every pauper is mere flesh and bone rotting six feet under.

Yet, deep within every heart and every soul, there is a longing for something more to this life. Because if our ultimate destination is death and no further, why does it matter what we do and how we live?

We silently and subconsciously cling on to the only thing that keeps us going: hope, like a spark of light at the end of the tunnel. A hope that the significance of our years spent on earth -may it be one or one hundred- ceases not with our last gasp for oxygen.

But such hope can only come from one who has himself conquered death, and thus can secure a promise of life after death. Only Jesus alone has conquered death, and only Jesus provides an answer to the hope of every heart. And all who believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Hope is not mere wishful thinking. Hope is not the flicker of a candle in the dark, quivering in the embrace of the lightest breeze, never knowing if it will withstand the wind.

Hope is closing your eyes on the world for one last time, knowing full well that you will open them in paradise.

And to raise a generation of hope is for the hopefuls to take this message to the hopeless - a message that gives the world a reason to live.

Because the things that we do today matter in the life to come.