I was offline for a few days because we made a quick trip to California to see our grandsons play baseball and to go to grandparents’ day last Thursday with the youngest.  We had to be in California by 3:30 PM on Wednesday for one of the games, so we took two days to travel down, spending Tuesday night in Reno.

After checking in to our downtown Reno hotel we decided to walk around a bit and find an inexpensive place to eat. We don’t normally stay in downtown Reno, usually on one edge of the city or the other. I think it has been decades since we walked around downtown under the “Reno Arch.” It was an experience.

There were so many men and women who were what my parents used to call “down on their luck.” They were asking for spare change, sitting on the sidewalks, a couple were in wheelchairs, each one was thin, dirty, and with that look of hopelessness emanating.

Inside the casino where we found a buffet, it was a different story and yet curiously much the same.  Most people at the buffet were “well fed,” but many had that same look of hopelessness I saw on the streets.

I was reminded on Tuesday that living without hope takes its toll one way or another. And when hopelessness reaches its end, it devastates men and women, leaving them as if they have been hollowed out and left with nothing but a shell of life.

I cannot (will not) cease praising God for the hope I have found in Him! “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” [Rom 5:1-2 NIV]