Why have hope?

I'm going to wax philosophical again. As we drove to church yesterday past boarded up houses and sad-looking people, littered streets and yards, and closed businesses, I wondered how people can feel like bothering to get up in the morning. There have recently been in the paper articles about human beings doing very inhumane things: woman putting her 3 week old baby in the microwave oven, a 10-year old raping his 7-year old stepsister, a man raping a woman then, later, before she was to testify against her, killing her and her unborn child. Last night we watched a movie imported from China with English subtitles called "King of Masks". It was very well made and a fascinating story. It brought out the undesirability of females in the Chinese culture. Girl babies are "throw-away" babies. Then we watched a 60 Minutes program about war waging in the Congo where women are constantly, repeatedly, and very publicly and brutally raped. It's all enough to make anyone feel like there is no hope on this earth. Yet, I do have hope. Why? I get my hope from the same source that the women victims in the Congo get it. They sing together of the promise of resurrection and the peace the Lord offers. A friend sent me an article about research that is just being explored because of evidence that women are actually very real supports to one another and can be for men, too, if allowed. When women follow their natural instincts to nurture and ignore the world's ways of drugs, power-seeking, wealth, and vanity, they can be a strong influence for good. A prophet has said, "Someday, when the whole story of this and previous dispensations is told, it will be filled with courageous stories of our women, of their wisdom and devotion, their courage, for one senses that perhaps, just as women were the first at the sepulchre of our Lord Jesus Christ after his resurrection, our righteous women have so often been instinctively sensitive to things of eternal consequence." I think about how I have felt lonely because I have not yet made many friends here in Dayton. Then I realize that some of my very best friends that I enjoy being with are in my family. I love talking to my sisters, my daughters and daughters-in-law. I am grateful for the women who have been my friends over the years, whether related to me or not, that send me uplifting e-mails and letters or call me, that heal me emotionally and spiritually. I will not be among the "good men who do nothing" that are the cause for "evil to triumph". I have hope because I am not alone in not only recognizing that there truly is good and evil in the world but wanting good to triumph and being willing to do anything to help make that happen.