60 Seconds of Hope with Horace McMillon

Send us Fan Mail “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”- Helen Keller Today’s reflection is more of a prayer: Dear God, In the midst of our difficulties and struggles, in the midst of our hardships and pain, we pray that you give us the hope we need to see our way through and the confidence in ourselves to believe we will overcome someho...

Send us Fan Mail If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” - from Isaiah 52 For those of us who claim to love God, it is not enough for us to fast, and pray. It’s not enoug...

Send us Fan Mail Moving Through Life with Hope “Hope is much more than wishful thinking. Hope is a way of moving through the world.” - Justine Musk Yes, life comes with hardship, obstacles, setbacks, and disappointments. There’s no getting around it. But life also comes with joy, beauty, love and opportunity.  Living in hope means being attentive to the beauty that lives all around us. It means pa...

Send us Fan Mail “We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized.” - Hebrews 6:11 Many years ago I attended my first family reunion in rural South Carolina. We were visiting a then long closed school where a lot of our ancestors had received their first formal education in America. We had been touring for a while It was a hot summer...

Send us Fan Mail “Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”  - Isaiah 58:12  It’s easy to become discouraged when we look at the state of the world. A mass shooting. A war where civilians caught in the crossfire face starvation and death. The exploitation of the p...

Send us Fan Mail Just because it comes with, doesn’t mean we have to eat it.” - Horace McMillon A big part of my journey towards improved health has required me to become very intentional about what, where, and when I eat and don’t eat. I have a daily calorie budget that work to stay within each day.  As part of my work, I travel a lot. I left home very early this morning. So I decided to grab bre...

Send us Fan Mail I am not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star. “-Sojourner Truth Sojourner Truth was born enslaved. She was beaten and mistreated. She was forced to marry a man she did not choose. Eventually, when her slave master reneged on his promise to free her, she freed herself and walked to freedom. Once free, she did not remain in the shadows or live out her life quietly...

Send us Fan Mail Don’t Be Perfect. Be Better Consistently. - Horace McMillon Over the past 17 months I have eliminated 100 pounds of weight and I have maintained my new weight. Before starting the process I was on medication for high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol. Under medical supervision, I’ve since been able come off all medications.  After consulting with a nutritionist, I wen...

Send us Fan Mail One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him. Booker T. Washington I know it’s tempting. When someone has done us wrong, often our immediate impulse is to pay them back, give them a taste of their own medicine. Sometimes we want to make them feel what we they felt. But we can’t do that without getting down to their level.  I’m not...

Send us Fan Mail If You Can See It “He responded, "You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not."  - 2 Kings 2:10 Elijah was perhaps the greatest and best known prophet of biblical times. His time on earth was drawing to a close. Elisha had been perhaps his closest protege and assistant. Elisha aspired to have a...

Send us Fan Mail Look for the Trailing Beauty  “Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.” ― Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart Some periods of our life are extremely difficult. They are hard to get through, hard to endure.  Nearly 20 years ago, my father passed away fro...

Send us Fan Mail You'll be free or die! Harriet Tubman When a situation is unacceptable, we have to stop accepting it. Harriet Tubman reached that place with respect to slavery in general and her enslavement in particular.  After escaping to freedom she made something like 18 more trips back to help others escape to freedom. She became known as Moses and is best known “conductor” of the Under...

Send us Fan Mail “ Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.” - Colin Powell Being optimistic makes us better and more effective at everything we do. I believe that. Former Secretary of State Powell believed that. I know what some of you are saying: Your belief is good but what kind of evidence do you have to support that claim. Turns out, there’s quite a bit. Optimism is linked to longevity and i...

Send us Fan Mail “Where there is no vision, there is no hope.” - George Washington Carver Coming into adulthood during the crack epidemic, I witnessed these words to be true in so many lives. The street level hustlers out there slinging rock knew they were in a profession with no future.  They knew their destination was the cemetery or prison but they didn’t see any way out. They couldn’t sing, co...

Send us Fan Mail Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud. Maya Angelou One thing life has taught me is that just about everyone you see is going through something. Nearly all of us are going to go through something difficult if we aren’t in the midst of a situation right now. Some are dealing with chronic health challenges. Some are dealing with economic uncertainty and instability. Others are...

Send us Fan Mail Hope Is Our Oxygen  “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” — Desmond Tutu Living a life of hope doesn’t mean one is blind to the hardships and suffering all around them. Living in hope doesn’t mean that one is oblivious to the scale and scope of the problems they face  Living in hope means being determined to see the light in the midst of the...

Send us Fan Mail “A dream is the bearer of a new possibility, the enlarged horizon, the great hope.” — Howard Thurman We are often so caught up in and overwhelmed by the activities of the day that we fail to visualize a different future for ourselves, our families, our communities and the world.  The way things are, are not the way things always need to be. We need to ask ourselves what a compelli...

Send us Fan Mail Hope Doesn’t Back Down   “ If I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I'm not backing off. “ - Fannie Lou Hamer For those who don’t know, Fannie Lou Hamer was a civil rights activist in Mississippi. She is perhaps best known for the quote that she was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Civil rights activists in those days faced the...

Send us Fan Mail When Love Pours In, Hope Flows Out “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” – Romans 5:5   Paul had spent much of his previous life not just as a religious fanatic but as a dangerous one as well. In his previous understanding, God was a demanding task master with standards one cou...

Send us Fan Mail Called to One Hope “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called;’ - Ephesians 4:4   The hope to which these words attributed to Paul calls us to aims to get us beyond our “us and them” mentality. Think about the many phrases embedded deeply in our consciousness: ‘We take care of our own.’, ‘Blood is thicker than water.’, ‘Country firs...

Send us Fan Mail Doing the Impossible   “Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” -  Francis of Assisi   Growth is a process. Achievement is a process. Accomplishment is a process. We start by doing the simple, the basic, easy. A new skier doesn’t start on the hardest slopes. The seemingly impossible becomes possible when we st...

Send us Fan Mail Sow now. Reap Later.    I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.' Muhammad Ali There’s a popular saying that says do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. I hope that’s true for you. But most of us have to do some things we don’t want to do to achieve the lives we truly want...

Send us Fan Mail Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. Robert Louis Stevenson We currently live in a data driven society. In the name of objectivity, productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness both public and private institutions- profit and nonprofit organizations have quantified seemingly everything. Decisions are made based on metrics. Many of us ha...

Send us Fan Mail Always Dream. Always Strive. “Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.”- Michelangelo   Let us strive, going forward, to live a life of no regrets, and no what ifs. Die knowing that we have accomplished as much as we could possibly accomplish and have contributed as much as we could possibly contribute.    Make a commitment to look to the horizons. When we...

Send us Fan Mail Let Hope Shape Our Futures “Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.” -  Robert H. Schuller Unfortunately, very few of us make it through life without pain and disappointment. For some of us, it was the betrayal of family and friends. Some of us have had people we loved betray our trust in ways that devastated us. Some of us have faced injustice, at work, at school, in l...