Strike a pose!

'I've been fighting fires for over 20 years,' one fireman said,' and I've never seen anything like it.' In recent weeks, we've witnessed one disaster after another wreak havoc with Australia, a nation usually so upbeat, so confident! Following hellish fires that seemed to burn forever, came floods that swept away more than just cars and personal belongings...it seemed to carry on it's murky waters the last strands of hope many held onto. Just as the images emerged of the couple who recorded a message to their children in the event of their foreseeable demise, other more impressionable images were caught by those grasping for some sense of meaning to their turmoil.

A mother looking into the eyes of her child, not with the weight of despair on her shoulders, but with a sense of awe that even natural disaster of gargantuan proportions could not dim the smile of one of the innocent. Then there flashed across our television screens pictures of neighbours being neighbours, picking up the pieces, sharing whatever was left of their lives so no one went without.Mothers and fathers capturing, in the face of huge tragedy,the spirit of hope for the sake of their children; children striking a pose, shrugging off the pessimism that sought to impose it's own dark will, defying the heinous cackle of the voice threatening more gloom.

Hope, I remain convinced, is still a potent force giving rise to faith. We're told that our faith is the very substance of what we hope for. Even in the days of unprecedented disasters, we choose to 'light a candle (of hope) instead of curse the darkness. We choose, when the world's looking for where to turn next, to strike a pose for hope.

In Hope