Jesus taught, "Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you" (Luke 6:38). There is a reciprocity in the affairs of life. We get back what we put into life. The mature Christian disciple is like his teacher. Everyone who is fully trained by Jesus will be like him. Jesus did good by responding to the needs of those around him.

Put simply, when life hurts and dreams fade, nothing helps like hope.”
(Charles Swindoll, Hope Again, xi,xii)

Hope is the antidote to despair. Job experienced despair when he suffered the loss of his children, his wealth and his health. “What strength do I have, that I should still hope? What prospects, that I should be patient?.... My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and they come to an end without hope” (Job 6:11;7:6).

Scott Stossel, editor of The Atlantic, has written a searingly honest book entitled, My Age of Anxiety: Fear, hope, dread, and the search for peace of mind. In it he reveals his own agonized search for relief from anxiety disorders throughout his life and reviews all the theories of the source of anxiety and the treatments for it. He describes anxiety as apprehension about future suffering -- the fearful anticipation of an unbearable catastrophe one is hopeless to prevent.

John 15:1-10 describes the process in terms of the true vine and its branches. If we want to bear fruit we have to remain connected to the vine. "No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." Jesus is the true, the authentic, vine which is cultivated by God as his people. "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."