Hope

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast; 
Man never Is, but always To be blest. 
The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home, 
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”

― Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

 After quite a hiatus, I’m returning to my series of blogs about seven “weighty words.” Not that anyone is keeping track, but I’m up to my penultimate word, which is “hope.” This word is tied closely with my previous weighty word, faith. In the previous blog I talked about the importance of understanding the object of your faith, and that just simply “having faith” in anything is not the point, but we must have faith in someone or something. I think that’s true for the word hope too. It’s not that we simply have hope, but that we have hope for something or in something, and it’s the thing in which we put our hope that’s most important.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Like previous blogs, I like to start with a definition or two. This site has a long list of definitions and uses of the word, but I’ll pick out just two that are succinct and capture the basic essence of hope:

intransitive verb To wish for a particular event that one considers possible. 

noun The longing or desire for something accompanied by the belief in the possibility of its occurrence.

So the word hope includes the idea of something happening in the future, usually something good or at least something we want to happen. If used in a positive sense, it should conjure up a sense of optimism and expectation that the thing hoped for will happen. Of course we can use it in a less positive way saying “I hope so” when we’re really thinking like a fatalist that it probably won’t happen! But the essential idea is that something good will happen, and we believe that it will.  The other important aspect of hope that’s tougher to get our heads around, and especially in our current age of instant gratification, is that hope requires waiting.  If you already have something, you don’t hope for it.  St. Paul states it like this:

Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

So somehow the waiting, and the expectation are good things that instill in us a positive feeling of hope.

I hope so

So, back to my early discussion on the object of your hope.  You can hope that you win the lottery. You can hope that it won’t rain tomorrow (actually we could use some rain here currently in Texas, so maybe I should hope it does rain!). You can hope for a nice gift for your birthday, or hope that a loved one will call you soon. You can even hope that your favorite team will finally win this year! I think these are all OK, but from the examples you can see that many of the things we hope for, while possible, are often highly unlikely to happen.  They are vain hopes.

When scripture talks about hope, however, it’s quite different. A quick search for the word hope in the Bible turned up 550 entries, almost all of which are very strong and positive assertions. They speak of a sure hope, and not a wavering or vain hope. For example Psalm 71 speaks about having hope in God our rock through the ups and downs of life. Verse 5 says “ For You are my hope, O Lord GOD, my confidence from my youth.”  And then verse 14 says “But I will always hope and will praise You more and more.” So this is a hope that brings confidence, and inspires someone to praise. It’s clear from this Psalm, and many other scriptures, that having a hope in God brings us strength, and that putting our hope in Him helps us to deal with the tough times in life. Hope, faith and trust in God are bound together when He is the focus of all three.

Ultimate hope

Having hope in general is a good thing. Having hope in God and His promises, I’d argue, is a better thing. But there’s something in scripture that I would say is the best object of all for our hope. Going back to the scripture I quoted earlier in this blog, but backing up a couple of verses, Paul says: 

“For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

The Christian’s hope is for “the redemption of our bodies.” In other words, our hope is that we will one day be resurrected like Jesus, that we will live forever. And the source of that hope is Jesus himself, who said:

“… so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

And again:

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?’”

And finally, the last book of the Bible gives this vision of a future state…

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’”

That’s the Christian’s hope, and that’s my ultimate hope. How about you?