Good ole Webster tells us that promises are statements which bind the person who makes it; ground or basis of expectation; and promising gives promises or grounds for good hopes.

We all have moments in our lives when we are given the opportunity to help others, a great moment, some more times than others and when that opportunity presents itself, we need to grab it like we do the rings on the Merry-Go-Rounds at the carnivals, latch onto it with all our strength and use it to the best of our ability for it is at that time that we are graced with the honor of GIVING hope.

Can you recollect the last time you helped someone hope? Hope is an emotion that is essential to living and we dare not violate that emotion! It certainly is true that we cannot live by bread alone. We must hope for today and hope for tomorrow.

There are people all around us who need hope. This past week, members of our congregation have been gathering funds and groceries to help our local Food Pantry. I had to marvel at the compassion shown by the store owners of the local businesses as we made lists of needed items the director of the Food Pantry furnished to us. I spent some time at the Pantry location, visited with people coming in for groceries. Allowed to visit the location 6 times a year, I wondered what the families did the other 6 months as I learned some of the circumstances with which they were struggling. But, hopefully what they were able to get to feed their family at this one visit with give them some hope.

Some ways we might be able to offer hope today is to, be there with an open heart and ears ready to hear. You know, there are moments in our lives when we miss someone so much that we just want to pick them from our dreams and hug them for real. Well, maybe this substitue with help YOU as much as it helps others. Listen but don't make promises you can't keep.

Maybe offer support when life becomes hard. We have all been there.........done that. The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything they just make the most of everything that comes along their way. Maybe help a mother learn how to stretch her food budget, use left overs, don't throw everything away. Go green, learn to recycle, but it is not always necessary to hand over money, especially when your own budget is tight and don't make promises that 'tomorrow everything will be better'. Just show them you care. Many times, a smile can make a dark day seem bright. And, remember, when you smile.......mean it!

Cry along with those in pain. Later this morning, I will be attending a cousins funeral. Yes, he lived a full life, but that is not to say he will not be missed by his wife and son and his friends and other family members. He will be missed. Tears will be shed. Somewhere I read these lines......'When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so at the end, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.' I found that so comforting. I hope and pray that is what happens when I 'take that final trip'. Another moment in life we share, but we need to be careful and not promise something we cannot deliver ourselves. Only give hope.

I love to cook, so as a result one of my favorite things to do, is to bake a dessert or cook a pot of soup and share it with someone else. They do not necessarily be in need a lift, I do it because I want to do it, but you know, I have found that when I have delivered a 'surprise dessert or kettle of soup', I discovered they were in need of a lift. I wonder, I just wonder, why, at that particular moment that I was led to do what I did?????

I do believe that my son-in-law has one of the neatest jobs in the world, he is a mail man, and he gets to bring all types of joys to people each and every day...........oh, with the exception of the days that the monthly bills hit the mail boxes, LOL.......but he gets to deliver the friendly greeting cards to cheer someone who is recuperating from surgery or just experienced a death in the family, or received that long awaited letter from a friend or family member. Who doesn't enjoy that special birthday greeting and surprised when it comes from a friend who does not have e-mail, but still enjoys delighting and surprising you with the fact that he or she did remember your birthday, or your anniversary!!!???

When a person asks you to pray for them, stop right then and there and pray with them. Hey, doesn't have to be a fancy prayer with all kinds of fancy words, doesn't have to be a long-winded version of what you are praying for, just say it from your heart. Say it with meanting, the meaning you feel. The sharing, the giving hope without promising them the world, is what is needed at the moment. The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past; you can't go forward in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.

I learned quite early in my childhood, as a result of training from my parents, the importance of a "PROMISE". Possibly I was to blame, I hate to think back that far, and I probably was what any child was doing at that age, saying, 'yes, mom, I promise, I will get my bed made, just let me finish this first' or maybe I would say 'I promise to finish picking those potatoe bugs after I run up to Doris's house for just a little while'. Because, 9 times out of 10, I did not follow through. Then, oh then, would come words that still haunt me to this day, 'don't make promises you can't keep or they will come back to haunt you'.................Believe you me, I have found it is a lot easier to make a promise than to keep it. Do you agree with me? Don't you wish everyone was that way? Wouldn't this world be a much better place to live in if everyone held to the promises they make or made?

So, Halloween is over. Hopefully our 'haunting' will be minimal until next Halloween when that holiday rolls around again. We can do it by just stopping, ....thinking with the God given brain we have been graced with.

Promises, promises. Remember what they mean! Remember what YOU should do when you make them!

CHALLENGE OF THE WEEK:

"YOU may be the only person that can bring joy or hope to a person's life, be standing by ready to help meet the need".