Hope for the hopeless

One of my cousins committed suicide last night. I hardly knew him as a child and didn't know him at all as an adult. Sadly, I hardly know that side of my family. Still, I'm sitting here mourning. I'm mourning the loss of a life. I'm mourning for his son who found him and had to take on the responsibility of notifying others, and a daughter who will never understand how her dad could do this. I'm mourning for his father who is now planning his own son's funeral. I'm mourning for his mother who will never be able to mend a lost relationship. I'm mourning for his brother and his sisters who lost a brother long before he took his own life. I'm mourning for a lost and hurting world that goes through the motions day after day with no hope.

I have always held the belief that suicide is a very desperate act by a deeply troubled or selfish individual. I never could understand how a sane person could look at it as an alternative to life. It suddenly dawned on me tonight. All it takes is to look at this life without the benefit of knowing Christ.

If you don't have Him in your life, you can't know hope. You can't know grace or forgiveness or selfless love. It breaks my heart. It absolutely tears me up inside. How very sad to live without knowing why. To read the headlines and see the horrors that happen in our own backyards and not see anything better or beyond all this. It's no wonder that a 44 year old man would want to end it all. I don't know how someone could go even that long.

I wish I could show everyone how hope-filled their lives can be. I want to take this world full of hopeless, hurting people and hold them in my arms. I want to show them my savior. Please God, shine through me! Please show me how to love and offer comfort and peace to a world who has forgotten you.