The midterm elections are just around the corner, and many experts are predicting high voter turnout. When you hear that - what does it mean? 

Believe it or not it means that the percentage of those eligible to vote will be near 50%. That's right half of the people who are eligible to vote, won't vote.

This is a well-known phenomenon in our country. 

Some blame voter apathy, which means people don't care. 

Others blame voter alienation, these people don't believe they'll be counted. 

And others blame voter exhaustion: too many elections and too much politics to deal with.

But whatever the reason, there’s an overriding feeling of discouragement and apathy that takes the day - that lingers over much of our modern landscape - that getting out and voting isn’t worth the trouble because things just aren’t going to change.

And this pervasive feeling of apathy leads to the tragedy that you and I lament as we hear of friends becoming more and more anxious, depressed, and even, as I’m sure it’s hit your life -  people taking their own lives. These depressing feelings of disappointment and darkness are literally of life and death importance.

This is a big reason I I am so fond of a Bible character that we will meet on Sunday named blind Bartimaeus. This is a blind beggar sitting by the side of the road who had every reason to believe that his lot in life would not be changed - that he would have to endure a lifetime of disappointment and discouragement.

But Bartimaeus did not let discouragement define him - he knew that of all the things in his life he could not change - he could change one: his attitude.

He persisted in a belief that the depression around him did not have to define him - he did not have to live as a victim - that his condition could be improved - that the impossible could happen.

Every one of us has something in our lives that runs parallel to this. There is some area in which we have lost hope, have become discouraged, and feel there is nothing that can be done to improve things.

Into this realm comes Jesus. At the heart of the story of blind Bartimaeus is hope and possibility - by healing Bartimaeus Jesus showed us that even so-called ‘lost causes’ are not lost.

Friends, like Bartimeaus there is so much about our situations that we seemingly can't change, our work, our families, our health, our political landscape, but one thing we can always change is our attitude, the way that we choose to look at the cards we've been dealt.

I think Jesus wants us to change the things we can change, and leave the rest up to him. This is how we open ourselves up for the miraculous, we refuse to take on the negativity, the discouragement, even the nihilism that surrounds us - 

I think Jesus wants us to make our desires known - and give us strength to stand up, speak up, ask, aggravate, cause a ruckus -  and demand action.

Friends, the stakes are too high for us who have hope, not to use it.

We can make a difference - 

No situation is hopeless -

For we serve a God for whom nothing is impossible.

I hope we all become like Bartimaeus and have our eyes opened to a vision of Jesus who bids us all to dream bigger, accept possibility, and to take up our mats and follow him to do the important work of hopefulness and encouragement that’s before us.