An important life lesson is to surround oneself with people you want to be like. If you are going to be a person of hope, you need to surround yourself with people of hope. The church should be such a place, and I desire that our congregation be a community of hope. If we are to fully embrace what it means to be the church on a hill, we must cultivate hope as a collective virtue. We must embody it and shine its light as brightly as we possibly can.