Just as I was about to tell the world about this blog i.e. my Facebook friends and about four people on Twitter, I realised I hadn’t said anything about what it is about! Mostly because I was not really sure what to say or where to start. I have wanted to start a blog for ages, I had the architecture all set up; pretty picture and everything, for about a year. But every time I went to write something I went blank and headed back to the much safer world of mindlessly scrolling through Facebook.
But then recently I had a conversation with a friend of mine about how, when things in this world seem so bleak, do we keep going. What is it that keeps us getting up in the morning, when it seems from everything around us that humans can be so cruel. When we are bombarded by terrible news stories and the hurt in our own lives. And when I started to think about that, it made me want to write something that brought hope. That inspired people, which to anyone who knows me may seem ironic given how much time I spend talking about human trafficking and poverty! But hope is all I have to cling on to. And to get a little Biblical on it, hope never disappoints.
My mentor said these words to me years ago, as I sat on her couch crying and nursing a severely broken heart and they have never left me, even though it took a few more years for me to believe it. But I can say now that hope does not disappoint and that it is, without doubt the confident expectation of good. So here I am, digging deep to see the hope and the beauty in the world, even in the most horrible of situations.
And this blog will undoubtedly cover the most horrible of situations for which I apologise in advance, but it can only be in knowing about these situations that we can change them. And I wholeheartedly believe that we can change the world, even if that world is the world of just one person. Whether it is the world of someone who is having a bad day and just needs a little bit of hope and a little bit of light. Or someone trapped in slavery who by our actions can be freed or the homeless person on the street who just needs one kind word.
We can change the world. Hope can spread like wildfire if we let it and to once again steal J.R.R. Tolkien’s quote…’where there’s life – there’s hope’. And there is beautiful, crazy, complicated and precious life all around us.
ilooktothehills 