Over a year ago I tried to launch a local business magazine. I failed. Lord knows it wasn’t the first failure in my life. But that didn’t make it much easier.

Of course I agreed with friends and peers who said the economy was to blame. Even my employees were kind when I let them go. But I couldn’t kid myself. I knew I had failed. The plan was flawed. And my timing was terrible.

Soon after I announced early last fall that I was launching this new magazine, I watched the economy drop through the floor. Established local businesses folded, one after another. Car dealerships closed their doors. Restaurants shut down. Builders stopped construction. Leaders laid off employees, and everyone wondered if and when things would turn around.

For a good part of a year I met with about a dozen other business owners each month and listened to them talk about the hard times they were going through. I watched a gentleman during one of our meetings try to hide the tears that filled his eyes as he described his desperate situation. After many years of business success, he simply didn’t have a solution for his dilemma. And his story was echoed with similar stories by other leaders in the room.

Most of these business owners were younger than I am, so I tried to encourage them. I told them our nation had been through many recessions before, and I had lived through several. I spoke optimistically about my new venture, boldly trusting God was in the midst of it, and success was going to come… for all of us… the economy was going to turn around… But it didn’t.

For some of us the experiences over the past year were  new. Regardless, most of us would like to forget these lessons and move on. But there was one experience that I want to hold on to — a powerful story of second chances by a special lady. Her name is Susan Boyle.

I know you’ve heard her story. But did you understand the words to the song she sang that first night on Britain’s Got Talent? While you watch the original event again, take a moment to read what she chose to sing:

       I dreamed a dream in time gone by,
       When hope was high and life worth living.
       I dreamed that love would never die,
       I dreamed that God would be forgiving.
       Then I was young and unafraid,
       When dreams were made and used and wasted.
       There was no ransom to be paid,
       No song unsung, no wine untasted.

       But the tigers come at night,
       With their voices soft as thunder,
       As they tear your hopes apart,
       As they turn your dream to shame.

       And still I dream He’ll come to me,
       That we will live our lives together,
       But there are dreams that cannot be,
       And there are storms we cannot weather!

       I had a dream my life would be
       So different from this hell I’m living,
       So different now from what it seemed…
       Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

Sounds pretty depressing doesn’t it? “Dreams that cannot be… storms we cannot weather… this hell I’m living… life has killed the dream….”

I wonder how many people feel this way right now. How many could sing that song with tears in their eyes… Laid-off workers, owners of failed businesses, contractors, salespeople — men and women who have successfully done the same thing for years — but now are out of work and wondering what lies ahead.

I don’t have a magic answer. But when my wife repeated Romans 15:13 to me after I folded my business and was feeling down one day, it totally changed my outlook:

       Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,
       that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Our God is the God of hope. He can fill us with all joy and peace. And when He does, you will abound in hope.

So that’s my prayer for you: that God will fill you with joy and peace throughout this holiday season, and as a result, your hope will abound for the new year. And I pray that you won’t listen to those “voices” in the night that “tear your hope apart … and turn your dream to shame.”

Oh, and if it’s any encouragement, that 48-year-old unemployed charity worker (and dreamer), Susan Boyle, recently released a new CD. Last I heard it had sold over 700,000 copies in the first two weeks. And it set a record for best-selling debut album in England and the most pre-ordered CD ever on Amazon.com.

So keep on dreaming. A new year is coming. And God will be with you through it.