Three Pictures of Hope in One Picture

I took this picture on Friday, December 18, 2020, from the parking lot of City of Hope in Duarte, California. Initially it spoke to me of the beauty of the morning sun on the San Gabriel mountains with the clear blue skies above and the hope expressed in John Keble's hymn:

“New Every Morning is the love our wakening and uprising prove; Through sleep and darkness safely brought, restored to life, and power, and thought.”

I deliberately, though, set the construction site in the foreground because this also spoke to me of hope. This is the construction of a new Hope Village on the campus of City of Hope by which the medical center is seeking to provide a new convenient and modern facility to replace the older cottages of Hope Village for those who have to come to stay in the campus from around the United States - and indeed the world - to receive treatments there. Hope Village and what it symbolizes constantly remind Rachel and me of how blessed we are to be living just eight miles from such an internationally renowned medical facility.

The picture was taken in the parking lot where I was waiting while my wife, Rachel, was having a chemotherapy infusion. As I walked the campus later as I waited for her, I was reminded by various buildings and signs that since 1914 this campus has been a symbol of hope beginning as a tuberculosis sanatorium, as many came there seeking hope from this frequently deadly disease.

It has subsequently become one of the leading treatment and research institutions in the world for cancer, diabetes, and other life-threatening diseases. City of Hope holds over 300 patents for medications that have been developed there and presents about 30 new applications each year to the Food and Drug Administration. Currently there are over 500 Clinical Trials being undertaken there, including one on another possible vaccine for Covid- 19.

I hope that as you look at this one picture you can see at least the three pictures of hope that I saw in that beautiful morning and hopefully even far more.

— Huw Christopher