Hold onto hope..!
Robert Clements
The skies were dark and a heavy cloud hung over us as we drove on roads
that echoed the darkness above. We were two writers in the car, my
friend, whose first book published by Penguin, had been a runaway
success, now stuck with no offers for his second, and me a newspaper
columnist who had just lost lucrative foreign newspaper.
Suddenly we both looked up from dismal black road and exclaimed at
glorious sight above: The dark cloud above had a beautiful silver
lining.
A sparkling line of hope!
Wasn’t it Jean Kerr who said, ‘Hope is the feeling you have, that the
feeling you have, isn’t permanent.’ Ah! What lovely lines; It means we
know we WILL eventually survive the night and bask in sunshine once
again. It does not deny the present darkness, but reminds us a beautiful
bright morning is just round the corner.
Brigadier General Robinson Risner spent seven years as a Prisoner of War
in Vietnam and there he discovered the power of hope. He spent four and
a half years of that time in isolation and endured ten months of total
darkness.
Those months were the longest of his life.
One day his Vietnamese captors, boarded up his little seven-by-seven
foot cell, shutting out the light, making him wonder if he was ever
going to make it. He had already been under intense physical and mental
duress after years of confinement. And now, not a glimmer of light shone
into his cell — or into his soul.
The Brigadier spent hours a day exercising and praying. But at times he
felt he could do nothing but scream. Not wanting to give his captors the
satisfaction of knowing they’d broken him, he stuffed clothing into his
mouth to muffle the noise as he screamed at the top of his lungs.
One day he crawled under his bunk and located a vent that let in outside
air. As he pressed against the vent, he saw a faint glimmer of light
reflected on the inside wall of the opening. The Brigadier put his eye
next to the cement wall and discovered a minute crack in the
construction. It allowed him to glimpse outside, but was so small that
all he could see was one blade of grass.
A single blade of grass and a faint ray of light! But when he stared at
the sight, he felt a surge of joy, excitement and gratitude like he
hadn’t known in years. ‘It represented life, growth, and freedom,’ he
later said, ‘and I knew God had not forgotten me.’
It was that tiny glimmer of hope that sustained the Brigadier through an
unbearable ordeal.
That dismal day in the car two writers also saw same hope and clung on
to it; a silver lining that told us God hadn’t forgotten us. Likewise my
friend, look for your own silver lining, your blade of grass and then
let peace fill your heart that a beautiful morning is just around the
corner..!
Email: bobsbanter@gmail.com
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