Narcotics Anonymous

Just For Today - Daily Email Service

   September 28                                                          Hope

      "Gradually, as we become more God-centered than self-centered, our
                           despair turns to hope."

                                                            Basic Text, p. 92

                           ----=----

   As using addicts, despair was our relentless companion.   It colored our
   every waking moment.   Despair was born of our experience in active
   addiction:  No matter what measures we tried to make our lives better, we
   slid ever deeper into misery.   Attempts we made to control our lives
   frequently met with failure.   In a sense, our First Step admission of
   powerlessness was an acknowledgment of despair.

   Steps Two and Three lead us gradually out of that despair and into new
   hope, the companion of the recovering addict.  Having accepted that so
   many of our efforts to change have failed, we come to believe that there
   is a Power greater than ourselves.   We believe this Power can-and
   will-help us.  We practice the Second and Third Steps as an affirmation
   of our hope for a better life, turning to this Power for guidance.  As we
   come to rely more and more on a Higher Power for the management of our
   day-to-day life, the despair arising from our long experiment with
   self-sufficiency disappears.

                           ----=----

   Just for today:   I will reaffirm my Third Step decision.   I know that,
   with a Higher Power in my life, there is hope.