Hope
Hope is always most necessary when everything, spiritually, seems hopeless. Thomas Merton
Gregg’s Reflection
As a young man, growing up in the time of Watergate and Vietnam, I did not have much hope. In fact, I had an apocalyptic world view, not seeing how the world could continue based on the realities we faced.
That is why we live today on 40 acres surrounded by National Forest, in an off-grid log home with room for family if our society crumbles. Upon selling the business, our first investment was in the land, and the home we built, far from civilization.
It was the touch of the Holy Spirit, which came to me before I believed, that brought with it hope. Our apartment burned two weeks after our wedding. We took the insurance money and bought camping gear, and went out West for a ten week road trip the spring after we married.
We camped in Canyonlands, in front of a large cave. It struck me that people had been camping here for thousands of years. The awe and wonder of that place, and the Mountains we traversed moved me, and drew me to begin my spiritual journey, my search for God.
God touched me in those mountains that spring.
It took a tour through the world’s religions before I found myself drawn to Christ and baptized into the Lutheran Church. On a men’s retreat called Cursillo a few years after I was baptized, I first experienced the Holy Spirit in a Christian setting, at a worship by a lake at the break of dawn. I realized that was the same Spirit that had touched me out West a decade before. It was the dawning of true hope in my life, a hope based in belief in God and the knowledge that I was born for a reason. Since then, through whatever has come, I have been an optimist.
The Oxford dictionary defines an optimist:
A person who tends to be hopeful and confident about the future or the success of something.
Wikipedia describes optimism:
An attitude reflecting a belief or hope that the outcome of some specific endeavor, or outcomes in general, will be positive, favorable, and desirable.
Don’t get me wrong. My study of structure was all about seeing reality clearly. So, I am not a fan of blind optimism. But an undercurrent of hope carries me along however unpleasant reality is at the moment. And I know, however bad things might get, it is not the end of the story. Even when facing death and dying, we know there is more.
James Finley says it this way:
As a person ripens in unsayable intimacy to God, they ripen in a paradoxical way. They understand God as a presence that protects us from nothing, even as God sustains us in all things. God watches over us; it does not mean God prevents the tragic thing from happening, it means God is intimately hidden as a profound, tender sweetness that flows and carries us along in the intimate depths of the tragic thing itself...up to and through death, and beyond.
That is the undercurrent of hope I am describing. So, come with me into a journey of hope. Blessings.
Journaling Prompts
How does being a glass half full person help you maneuver through life? How can negative thoughts about the future paralyze you in the present? If you have faith, have you found the undercurrent of hope, and how does it sustain you?
Scripture
Yes, my soul finds rest in God; my hope comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.
Psalm 62:5-6
The Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.
Psalm 147:11
There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off.
Proverbs 23:18
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.
Jeremiah 29:11
I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.
John 12:32
I have come as light into the world, so that anyone who believes in me should not remain in darkness. I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world but to save the world.
John 12:46-47
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Romans 12:12
For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.
Romans 15:4
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:18
That is why we labor and strive, because we have put on hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.
1 Timothy 4:10
We who have taken refuge in God are strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us. We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain where Jesus has entered before us. (Hebrews 6:18-20) All spiritual formation is founded on the trustworthiness of God’s character and the truth of God’s revelation in the person of Jesus Christ. This conviction leads to life-sustaining hope.
RENOVARE Bible notes on Hebrews 6:19
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1
Ancient Writings
We can never enter upon the path of virtue unless we have hope as our guide and companion.
Pelagius, Letter to Demetrias
Hope is about the possible; despair is about the impossible.
Thomas Aquinas
We should ask God to increase our hope when it is small, awaken it when it is dormant, confirm it when it is wavering, strengthen it when it is weak, and raise it up when it is overthrown.
John Calvin
The blessedness we ask for should be the security of knowing we are already blessed.
St. Teresa of Ávila, Interior Castle, trans Mirabai Starr, p. 68
Modern Writings
We want to create hope for the person … we must give hope, always hope. When you don't have anything, then you have everything. Pain and suffering have come into your life, but remember pain, sorrow, suffering are but the kiss of Jesus—a sign that you have come so close to Him that He can kiss you.
Mother Teresa
Hope is always most necessary when everything, spiritually, seems hopeless.
Thomas Merton, A Year with Thomas Merton, p. 326
Hope frees us to live in the present, with the deep trust that God will never leave us.
Henri Nouwen
Hope is not a question of having a wish come true but of expressing an unlimited faith in the giver of all good things. . . . Hope is based on the premise that the other gives only what is good. Hope includes an openness by which you wait for the promise to come through, even though you never know when, where, or how this might happen.
Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 12/4/20
Hope is called the anchor of the soul (Hebrews 6:19) because it gives stability to the Christian life. But hope is not simply a ‘wish’ (I wish that such-and-such would take place); rather, it is that which latches on to the certainty of the promises of the future that God has made.
R.C. Sproul
If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy. the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.
C.S. Lewis
Hope springs from the continuing experience of God’s compassion and help. Patience is hope in action. It waits for the saving help of God without giving up, giving in, or going away.
Thomas Keating Open Hearts Open Minds p. 164
The virtue of hope, with great irony, is the fruit of a learned capacity to suffer wisely, calmly, and generously. Any form of contemplation is a gradual sinking into this divine fullness where hope lives. Contemplation is living in a unified field that produces in people a deep, largely non-rational, and yet calmly certain hope, which is always a surprise. A life of inner union, a contemplative life, is practicing for heaven now.
Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 12/12/20
Mystical experiences lead to a kind of foundational optimism you would usually call hope. Hope is not logical but a participation in the very life of God (just like faith and love which were called the theological virtues).
Faith, hope, and love are always somehow a gift of participation in something larger than yourself. As you go deeper into the journey I promise you you will always be more naturally hopeful and you will usually sense a deep safety and security.
Richard Rohr, Yes, and, p. 77
What hope and joy a God of infinite love gives us all! Among many other things, it takes away all fear of admitting our wrongs to God, to ourselves, to others.
Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 12/21/19
The virtue of hope, with great irony, is the fruit of a learned capacity to suffer wisely, calmly, and generously. The ego demands success to survive; the soul needs only meaning to thrive. Somehow hope provides its own kind of meaning, in a most mysterious way.
Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 4/17/20
The dynamic of being able to yield unconditionally to God’s future is what John of the Cross calls hope.
Constance Fitzgerald, “From Impasse to Prophetic Hope: Crisis of Memory,” in Desire, Darkness, and Hope: Theology in a Time of Impasse, p. 442
Hope’s home is at the innermost point in us, and in all things. It is a quality of aliveness. It does not come at the end, as the feeling that results from a happy outcome. Rather, it lies at the beginning, as a pulse of truth that sends us forth. When our innermost being is attuned to this pulse it will send us forth in hope, regardless of the physical circumstances of our lives.
Hope fills us with the strength to stay present, to abide in the flow of the Mercy no matter what outer storms assail us. It is entered always and only through surrender; that is, through the willingness to let go of everything we are presently clinging to. And yet when we enter it, it enters us and fills us with its own life a quiet strength beyond anything we have ever known.
Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God, p. 86-87.
The best we can hope for in this life is a knothole peek at the shining realities ahead. Yet a glimpse is enough. It's enough to convince our hearts that whatever sufferings and sorrow currently assail us aren't worthy of comparison to that which waits over the horizon.
Our Christian hope is that we are going to live with Christ in a new earth, where there is not only no more death, but where life is what it was always meant to be.
The Subversive Nature of Hope
Hope is subversive precisely because it dares to admit that all is not as it should be. And so we are holding out for, working for, creating, prophesying, and living into something better for the kingdom to come, for oaks of righteousness to tower, for leaves to blossom for the healing of the nations, for swords to be beaten into plowshares, for joy to come in the morning, and for redemption and justice.
Sarah Bessey, Author
Hope sustains us in the now and not yet.
Gregg Burch