Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.

In two months we will be celebrating Christmas. This year’s Christmas celebration may appear bleak to many Filipinos in Luzon areas. Christmas signals hope to the world because our Savior Jesus Christ had conquered sin and death and had given us liberty and eternal life in His name.

For weeks, thousands of Filipinos are still bearing the wrath of three brutal typhoons that hit country. Their places are still submerged under water. They lost loved ones; they lost houses. They may have lost their joy to live upon seeing that what are left to them are the clothes they wear on.

While there has been an outpouring of help from fellow Filipinos here and abroad and from foreign agencies and governments all over the world, it appears that physical help is not enough.

We can feed our people and clothe them and provide them shelter, but more than that, flood victims need to be infused with a fresh dosage of hope.

Physical help is a temporary relief to the gnawing pain felt by flood victims. The other side of the story is that the souls of our suffering people have been wounded by a problem not a creation of their own. Losing loved ones and losing treasured possessions could kill one’s will to live.

One quote says: “Never let go of hope. One day you will see that it all has finally come together. What you have always wished for has finally come to be. You will look back and laugh at what has passed and you will ask yourself... ‘How did I get through all of that?”

For now, it is difficult to make sense out the disasters that paralyzed homes and lives because the tragedy is still fresh to them. But when our people are still clinging on the bounties of hope, they would remain steadfast in the darkness even if a faint ray of light is hardly seen in the distance.

Wit this, we are calling our church to dish out more positive sermons on Sunday masses and early morning church services, messages that are centered on hope and recovery, that there is a God who sees it all and who is all willing to dispense His immeasurable mercy and compassion.

Maybe we can still let go of the thoughts of the upcoming election. Election issues, compounded by ongoing corruption scandals, are very tempting to talk about.

The Bible says there is time for everything. There is time for a heated discussion on election topics. But now is the time to speak more of hope for the country. Because this message of hope is more important, at least for now, than the 2010 national budget, more important than reform in the government, more needed than food in the table, more urgent than jobs.

Let’s remember what one philosopher has said of hope: “Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.”