I will be right up front with you. One of my nominees (not that they will listen to me) for Book of the Year is this one:

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a short review of it here and then wrote a post about it here. I said I would post further thoughts but life happened-tragedy happened– and further posts were pushed to the side. I want to use a couple posts this week to give some attention to thoughts from Levi’s book…and thanks to my office manager, Diana, some other thoughts Levi has shared in various venues.

First from the book:

“Hope is a powerful thing. The evangelist Billy Graham said, ‘What oxygen is to the lungs, hope is to our survival in the world.’ In The Hunger Games, President Snow said hope is the only thing more powerful than fear. I’ve heard it said that in Air Force survival training courses, instructors teach something called ‘Rule of Threes’: In a survival situation you can last three weeks without food, three days without water, three hours without shelter in extreme conditions, and three minutes without air. But you can’t make it three seconds without hope.’ ” (p.97)

Hopelessness often leads people to do desperate things-things they normally wouldn’t do. Even the most stoic person can react adversely if hope is taken away. Tell a hospital patient there is no hope and you may as well sign their death warrant.

Hope is a confident expectation. It is an anchor of the soul. And one of the cool things about an anchor is it comes with a heavy-duty chain. Our hope is a solid anchor which never comes loose from its chain. No matter what hits.