791) It’s been several years since I read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a psychiatrist who was a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during WWII. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl writes of the different ways prisoners around him responded to the horrific things that happened when held captive. As he spoke with and studied prisoners, he saw a pattern. He saw prisoners who were being destroyed emotionally and psychologically and others who lived in the same conditions who became stronger in these same areas. What he discovered was that the prisoners who became stronger held onto hope and “meaning” in their emotional and psychological lives. Those who did not have hope and meaning didn’t fare well.  

Proverbs 13:12 tells of the importance of hope and why we need it. As God’s children, we have hope. Hope that God is always working for our good, that another life with nothing bad is coming into the next world. Hang on to hope; it has great value.