Acts 27:13-20. The ship bearing Paul and other prisoners to Italy is having a difficult journey. The captain and ship owner have just decided, against Paul's advice, to try to reach a harbor in Crete and remain there for the winter. Soon they are caught in a northeaster and driven off course. As the storm becomes violent, the men begin throwing cargo overboard, and by the third day they "cast out with their own hands the tackle of the ship." For many days they see neither sun nor stars while the tempest continues until "all hope of ... being saved was at last abandoned."

This storm describes our darkest moments - the moments we have all experienced, or will experience - the moments when we truly do think all hope is lost, there is no chance of our being saved. We will see that for Paul and the men on the ship it is not true - there is still hope. There is always hope. There is no need to ever give up hope, we have already been saved - that is why Christ came and died for us.

While we always must hope, we must still undergo the storms of life. It is how we handle those things - how we go through those storms - that determines our fate. Do we always believe and trust, even when there seems to be no hope, or do we succumb to darkness and despair? Even if the sun and the stars are hidden for days, they still remain. Even if we lose our physical life, we still remain. Christ has won eternal life for us. Whether we share in that eternal life with Him in heaven depends on whether we cling to our hope and faith and let everything else go. That is the key.

God is always with us, even in our darkest times, so no storm can truly defeat us. If we approach every storm in life with faith and hope and do our best to get through it without giving in to temptation, sin, or despair, we have nothing to fear. Even if we lose our life in the battle, we know what we are promised, and that is the path to sainthood!

We must never abandon hope. Remember that the gates to hell in Dante's inferno read "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." The inscription could just as easily have been reversed - "All ye who enter here have abandoned hope." In other words, when we abandon hope, we abandon God and consign ourselves to hell.