Rays of Hope: Living to Make a Difference

When Christopher R. Mwashinga, Jr who pastored us when I was a student asked for my postal address little did I know what gift he intended to send. Of course I had a hunch it would be a spiritual book. But I had no idea it would be a book he has written. It thus came as a blessed surprise yesterday when I received a book entitled Rays of Hope: Living to Make a Difference.

It has just been published by Maximum Hope Books in Berrien Springs, Michigan.

The book is dedicated to all "Adventist university and college students in Tanzania whom" Pastor Mwashinga was "privileged to serve for over a dozen years". Its epigraph, written in three languages, is categorical about who deserves all the honors and all the glories:

Soli Dei Gloria

Utukufu kwa Mungu Pekee

To God Alone be the Glory

In the preface to the book Pastor Mwashinga thus sums up the the four-fold goal of what primarily constitutes the chapters of the book:

[W]elcoming new Adventist students to university life, encouraging and inspiring faithfulness to God and His Word, challenging them to settle for nothing less than the best, and finally challenging them to give back to the communities, the church, and the world at best.

I, for one, has always remembered at least one of the four over the years - to settle for nothing less than the best and hopefully and prayerfully this book will help me really focus on giving back to the communities, the church, and the world at best.

The chapters are thus beautifully titlted respectively:

1. Another Ray of Hope

2. Living One Day at a Time

3. Cheer Up Adventist Students

4. Focusing on Christian Service

5. Welcome to the Hill

6. Back to the Bible

7. Charge to Students

8. Enduring the Cross

Interestingly, the book concludes with a poem 'Saved by Christ Alone' from Pastor Mwashinga's other book entitled Beaches of Golden Sands: Inspirational Poems. At the risk of pre-empting your readership quest I thus present its last stanza below and urge you to get hold of the book and bask in the Rays of Hope coming from the Holy One who was really Living to Make a Difference when He walked and died on planet earth to save you and me:

I am a sinner saved by Christ alone,

Now I enjoy full and free salvation

For it is grace alone, through faith alone,

That has given me eternal redemption.

Alleluia I shout, for free salvation!

Photo 1: Lars Justinen

Photo 2: American Poems