A woman walked into a department store in Boston. Just as she entered the door, bells started to ring, buzzers sounded, and over the loud-speaker there came a voice saying, "We have a winner, we have a winner!

Now they showered this lady with gifts and with prizes-she was given a trip to Hawaii, all expenses paid, a brand-new refrigerator, the latest model stove, a new bedroom set-all because she was the 1 millionth customer who had entered that store.

When she was through screaming with delight and squealing with surprise, a television reporter for one of the local stations asked her, "Just what was it you were going to buy when you walked into the store?" "Buy," she answered. "I wasn't going to buy anything. I was on my way to the complaint department!"

It seems that no matter what happens in our lives and in our world in this day and age, we find ourselves complaining about it, and, too often, expecting the worst from life.

That's why I've come to believe that perhaps the greatest four letter word in the English language may well be-HOPE! Hope: don't ever lose your capacity to hope. Dr. Max Frankel from his bitter experience and observations during the Holocaust wrote a great book called, Man's Search For Meaning. His central point is that you can take away a person's job, his possessions, his health and even his family-but leave him his faith and his hope for tomorrow, and he will find a way to go on. Conversely, give him the best job in the world, a marvelous bank account, robust health and a wonderful family-but take away from him his dignity and his hope in the future- and he will struggle in vain to go on. The person who learns to hope perseveres, if not flourishes in life. Without hope we perish.

It was the Medieval poet Yehuda Halevi who made the observation that "to be a Jew is to be a prisoner of hope." Truly we have been nourished by hope and kept alive by it through the centuries for how else could we ever have survived our many bitter chapters throughout history? How else could a Jew, hiding from the Nazis in an underground bunker in Cologne, Germany have written these famous words on the walls of a bleak, dark dungeon:

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when I do not feel it. I believe in God even when God is silent.

It's interesting how in the Hebrew language the word "Shachor" means black- dark. Those very same letters- with different vowels- spell the word "Shachar" which means the dawn of a new day. In the midst of the darkness of despair, we must never forget how close we are to the promise of a bright dawn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is a man I find myself quoting over and over again, because I think he was really a genius and he knew how to put his finger on a great truth. Emerson noted that the great ages of history were times when individuals found the strength to summon hope. These were ages in which the human spirit was not broken by warfare or by famine or by depression or by plagues. Hope springs eternal in the human breast of those who trust ultimately in God.

When there is a loss of hope there follows depression, violence, various phobias, drug abuse, suicide and all manner of disease. Truly no one suffers more than the person who is without hope. Sometimes, especially with creative folks, there comes a dry spell. The great composer Sir Francis Elgar hit a writer's block at one period of his life. Week after week his wife's memoirs reflect despair over Elgar's loss of the muse. But every day he went to write. And then one day, Elgar came back and reported, "I wrote a line of music today- it became on of his most famous pieces- The Enigma Variations.

We don't have to be artists however, to feel adrift, alone and without resources.
 

The wounded lover, who has lost her husband through divorce and has no hope of a better tomorrow, seems to die a little bit every day.

A man whose beloved wife has passed away and who can see no hope of ever again being happy, suffers every hour.

A student who has no hope of making it through school and no dreams for a future, lacks any motivation to do what is at hand to assure a better tomorrow- such a student is known as hopeless.

A parent with a troubled child will have serious doubts about their future.

I remember Bill Cosby telling how he once asked his late father whether life had taught him to view the glass as half empty or half full. The elder Cosby replied philosophically,

Son, it all depends on who's pouring.

I've met them. So have you, these people who walk around who are such downers. They're the gloom-casters and you can always count on them to have a complaint or a criticism- just like that lady who ironically wound up being the winner in the department store.

This matter of hope and hopefulness gets really serious where our children are concerned, remaining optimistic and refraining from censoriousness and cynicism is crucial for parents. Not long ago, Ann Landers printed a little article entitled "Saturday with a Teen-Age Daughter."

Are you going to sleep all day? . . .
Who said you could use my hair spray? . . .
Clean the dishes off the table . . .
Turn down that radio . . .
Have you made your bed? . . .
That skirt is too short . . .
Your closet is a mess . . .
Stand up straight . . .
Somebody has to go to the store . . .
Quit chewing your gum like that . . .
Your hair is a mess . . .
I don't care if everybody has one . . .
Turn down that radio . . .
Don't slouch . . .
Didn't you make your bed? . . .
Quit banging on the piano . . .
Why don't you look it up in the dictionary? . . .
Why did you ever buy that . . .
Take the dog out . . .
You forgot again . . .
Turn off that radio and go to sleep.

And Landers ends with this-

Another day gone and not once did I say, "I love you."
Dear Lord forgive me.

And, of course, good ole religion too often contributes to the poisoning of our attitudes. There are so many people today who are willing to condemn other people for just believing their own faith. I remember some time back I was in an airport. It was late at night and I was going out to meet a guest. In the entire wing of the airport there were only two people. I was there and so was a redcap, sitting in a chair waiting for the plane to pull up to the ramp.

And I mentioned to him "There's nothing lonelier than being in an airport late at night."

The man's response was, "Yes, but you don't have to be lonely if you believe in Jesus." I told him that in fact I understood well the importance of religious faith as I was a Rabbi. The man looked at me, shook his head in disbelief and sadness, and then said- "Too bad about you. You look like a perfectly nice fellow too. As a Jew, you know you're gonna burn in hell, don't you?"

I have to believe that genuine religion is intended to be far more a set of wings for the human spirit than a weight; more a blessing than a burden; more a sense of hopefulness than a dark cloud over one's eternal prospects.

Hope. H-O-P-E- it may well be the most powerful four letter word in the English language, and it should be at the very heart of religion and of life.

This week, every person whom we're going to meet will be struggling with some kind of burden, and in a variety of ways, they're going to be asking us, "How'm I doing?"

What good word will we have for them? Maybe it will be a child off for school, an insecure teenage, a husband or wife off for a difficult day, a neighbor facing some medical test, or someone who stumbles into our presence with the flavor of their day not yet determined. What is the good word that we'll be able to speak? It may be that more will depend on it than we will every come to know.