I know everyone’s financial situations are different, but I sometimes feel we don’t fully comprehend how truly blessed we are. It is just through cosmic luck that we were born into the fortunate circumstances that so many of us were, where we don’t have to worry about food, shelter, safety, healthcare, or school.

But life could have so easily turned out different for each of us. I feel we have a Christian duty to help those who were born into much less fortunate circumstances-those who’ve probably had a rough go at life in their relatively short lives and endured things that we cannot imagine.

Education is one way for those in South Sudan to try to get just a little bit closer to having a better life than the one they might have been born into. They may be short on means, but not on motivation. While some of us may not have liked school all that much, there are those who so desperately want an education and the chance to succeed, but currently don’t have that opportunity.

When you sponsor a deserving student to be able to take that next step in their educational journey, you are giving them hope. When I think of hope, I think of Andy Dufresne’s famous line in the movie The Shawshank Redemption: “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." Please give a student the gift of hope, by providing them the path to shoot for the stars, and get there.