Key to the Cornerstone

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone . . . Hope has had nothing but fear and oppression since her early childhood. The sickness had not only taken her family, but her whole village. All she ever knew had vanished, leaving her, the only survivor, on the doorstep of her home too stunned to cry; despair. The last to pass into the dark river of death was her father. Unable to whisper but a word, he placed in her palm a key. That key he had always worn about his sun burnt neck. She held it as though it were the key to life itself; never would she let it go.