"How can we be hope leaders in this hopeless world? Mull over these suggestions as you consider other possibilities in your own life:
"1. Use hope-filled words intentionally. Do an audit of your spoken and written communications.
2. Ask loved ones around you to critique your words and your actions. Do they look in the right places for hope from you?
3. Pick one arena of your life — your home, congregation, school, or workplace — to say and do hope to others. How does it feel? What reactions do you receive?
4. Look in the mirror or ask a friend to check your facial expressions and body language. Humans copy what they see in others.
5. Evaluate what and who makes you angry. Analyze your feelings, ask help from others, and reinvent ways to respond to others in hope.
6. Spend more time with hope-filled people. Our hope levels need to be restored regularly.
7. Search the Scriptures. In them is real hope! Do a concordance study of all the hope passages; it's an amazing experience!
8. Tell others of 'the hope that is in you' (1 Peter 3:15).
9. Keep well in body, mind, and spirit by looking for hope in all the right places: in Word and Sacrament; in the body of believers, the Church; in Baptism.
10. Know that there still is hope in Jesus Christ! Our faith and hope in Christ do not depend on how we look, act, or feel, and that's a good thing. It all depends on what Christ has already done for us on the cross and in the resurrection."
