Circumstance

Hope Makes You Courageous

Ray Johnston Ray Johnston wrote this on

In my last blog, I introduced you to Hilda and her amazing, hope-filled work with children in the slum of Dandora, Nairobi, Kenya. She held onto hope for 15 years, and as a result a worship center was built that had a profound impact on the community. It’s been my privilege to work together with her.

On one trip, I knew a contested election had sparked riots across Kenya and angry mobs had torched practically everything since our last visit. Hilda greeted me, then said, “You have got to see this.” She dragged me over to the fence. Continue reading →

Do Circumstances Break You—Or Make You?

Ray Johnston Ray Johnston wrote this on

Tough circumstances are no match for the kind of inner strength fueled by hope. Let me illustrate:

  • Lock him in a prison cell, beat him, and shipwreck him, and you have the apostle Paul.
  • Deafen him, and you have a Ludwig van Beethoven.
  • Cripple him, and you have a brilliant novelist and poet—Sir Walter Scott.
  • Raise him in abject poverty, and you have an Abraham Lincoln.
  • Burn him so severely that doctors say he’ll never walk again, and you have a Glenn Cunningham—the man who set the world’s one-mile record in 1934.
  • Strike him down with polio, and he becomes a Franklin D. Roosevelt.
  • Call him a slow learner, label him “retarded,” and write him off as uneducable, and you have an Albert Einstein.
  • Have her born black in a society filled with racial discrimination, and you have a Rosa Parks.
  • Subject him to torture in a Japanese prison camp for over three years, and you have a Louis Zamperini.

Continue reading →