Thinking today about how different people are. [I mean my Bible school classmates.] We think differently, we feel differently, we love and hope and trust differently. We're all God's kids, precious and radiant and deserving of love in our own ways, but we're all different.

I'll warn you now: this is a test, but not a fair one. I have formed a conclusion based on highly questionable data. On the one side I have the people mentioned above, plus myself and the other Christians I know. On the other I have Douglas Coupland, as I understand him from reading Life After God. It seems to me that we, the Christians, (though none of us are perfect, and few of us are good) all have hope. Douglas, it seems, does not. And while I'm wary, even cynical about this kind of ill-informed, over-generalized and perhaps arrogant statement, while I have deep doubts about whether God really does anything tangible whatsoever in our lives, it seems to me, so far, that this is true: Christians tend to have more hope than non-Christians. To me, this is somehow very comforting.

Of course I'd have to know a lot more non-Christians (and Christians) for this comparison to have any validity. Theoretically, I suppose it makes sense that people with firm religious beliefs would have more hope for the future. I'm not sure why I found this comforting.