Today’s prompt for 31 Days to Telling Your Story is: Hope.
Each post in this series has been written in five minutes flat as part of the 31 Days of Five Minute Free Writes writing challenge.
Want to read more posts in this series? Click here for the Table of Contents.
If you’ve been following along with this series, you’ll know that I’m in the midst of sharing five reasons why I believe you should share your story. Read Reason #1 here and Reason #2 here.
A third reason I believe you should share your story is to instill hope.
On our recent trip to South Africa, we visited a pastor friend and his wife. This particular couple happens to minister in one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods in South Africa. Lavender Hill is notorious for its gang violence and all-too-frequent shootings.
During our visit, our friend told us about a day when one of his congregation members phoned him and said, “Pastor, they’re shooting again!” Immediately he said, “I’m on my way.”
Sure enough, by the time he got to her house, three dead bodies were strewn across the pavement in front of her home.
He says this past December and January, he conducted seven funerals in nine weeks.
He then told us, “This church doesn’t have money to support us, but that’s not why we go there. We go to instill hope.”
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Walt Disney once said, “That’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.”
Is this not part of our responsibility as Christian writers and storytellers?
We write to instill hope.
[Tweet “”We write to instill hope.” ~ @k8motaung”]
And how can we be so confident that this hope is true and trustworthy?
For one thing, Hebrews 6:19a says, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” Use your story to drop the anchor so someone else can find the stability they need in Christ.
As Elisabeth Elliot said, “Of one thing I am perfectly sure. God’s story never ends with ashes.”
RELATED POST: Holding Out Hope
Visit the Table of Contents for the rest of the posts in the series, 31 Days to Telling Your Story.
Wow! That story you shared about the pastor in South Africa. That’s incredible. As our friend Susan likes to say, hope changes things!