Hope is More Than a Strategy

joe —  Fri 23-Dec-11

Hope One WayAs this year closes out I have a very simple wish for each of you. I pray that you may have hope. Great hopes. The kind that you can’t tell anyone for fear of sounding like some kind of nut job.

I am not praying that you get what you want. Looking back there are a lot of things that I wanted that I am glad I never received. I want you to have more.

I want you to believe in something; to have hope that something that seems so far fetched right now is possible.

I wish for you a drive to do the unexplainable in the name of the impossible.

At my last company I was well know for repeating “hope is not a strategy.” It isn’t. Hope is more important than a strategy. It drives all of your strategies. Hope is what makes you want to have a strategy.

Linus and TreeChristmas is all about hope. Christ’s birth is hope incarnate.

Wars are often suspended during the season raising everyone’s hope that we ultimately share a common desire for peace.

It’s this time of year that hope causes us to try once again to proclaim our New Year’s resolutions.

It’s the hope of a young girl in Cumming, GA this year whose only wish on her Christmas list was to be warm.

It’s the hope of our dear friend visiting Africa this past summer that baby Chello would survive one more day.

All of these hopes were more than just desires. They drove action. They didn’t stop the war or guarantee warmth or survival but they did align ourselves with what we believe is right. They caused us to be more than ourselves despite the pressures of daily life.

Without hope, without the crazy belief that the impossible is possible, without the admission that you actually can act on a dream, you risk tomorrow not being any different than today. In the words of an old French proverb, “hope is the dream of the soul awake”.

So as you celebrate this season please know that there is a world and a Creator of your soul that has great hopes for you.

“Hope never abandons you. You abandon it.”

George Weinberg

My wish for you this year is that you face your hopes right in the face. I pray that these hopes cause you to do something that you cannot, at this moment, believe you would ever do.

Merry Christmas, my friends.