Hope and Faith Moments

Three Faces of Hope

Recently I returned to my Oxford Dictionary to refresh my memory on the definition of hope. I've grown uncomfortable with how easily we as a culture use the word hope to dismiss the very essence of what the word is intended to convey. How has the word hope come to be its own worst enemy? Do we as a culture still have hope? What does it mean to hope? Oxford offers three words that define hope as a verb in our culture: Expect, desire and confidence. I believe these words are the keys to understanding hope in our culture, as well as defining this understanding as three faces of hope.

To expect something to happen usually means one of two things: an event is going to take place because it has been planned to occur; or an expectation has been set apart from any connection to reality, and it may or may not occur. To expect the birth of a child is to anticipate an event that is planned to occur. Circumstances may sway how that event happens, but the expectation and the event are both concrete, real. To expect that same child, three years later, to automatically put her/his toys away because they have been told to once is a false expectation. New skills take time and encouragement to develop. To believe otherwise is to have false hope, and to set oneself up for disappointment and frustration.

To expect something based in reality is to hope for something that can actually become a reality. To expect something that likely will not be is to hope falsely. I believe this is where we have turned hope against itself, pretending that hope is a last ditch piece of magic to reconcile our realities like an out-of-balance checkbook. If we hope, even falsely, then God will hear us and life will be perfect, by our standards. When life doesn't become perfect, whole, fixed, we generally blame God, a God who doesn't listen and doesn't give us what we want. Our hopes are dashed, we put a little and still have to manage our lives. Our false hopes translate to a false accusation against God, and we are no where but where we started.

Desire. It's a fantastic soap opera word. Images of great romances, passionate love affairs and love-gone-wrong-made-right are all evoked by the word desire. I have nothing against the usage or the soap operas. I can tell you the story lines from Days of Our Lives right now. My only complaint is how limited our use of the desire has become. Dream is a much safer term, more ethereal, and like false expectations, easier to pretend with ourselves about. Desire is about passion, commitment and a zest for living.

Can you envision hope in such a dramatic, powerful way? If you can you can see that this kind of hope is big, strong and every ounce of real that is possible. Desirous hope speaks of faithful abandon, a joyous celebration of what you can see coming, and you can zero right in on it with a great shout of, “Hallelujah1” Do we as a culture still have hope? We say we do. I'm not sure our culture does know this kind of hope, this treasure of delight that can move us forward and deepen our resolve for a better future. We are a tenuous people, not quite wanting to invest in and develop something we don't believe we can touch. To dream is an ethereal, individual experience. To desire is to lay claim to the passion of living and forge ahead.

We are missing this kind of hope in our culture, but I believe we can begin to dot the landscape with potent doses of this kind of desirous hope that faith in God inspires. Openness to that infusion of power and grace is the conviction for things we can't see yet, but can survey with our hearts and souls. What it means to hope is to have confidence in God as our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. Our expectations and desires are based in reality, we are confident in them because we have every reason to be.

More than anything, these three faces of hope – expectation, desire and a feeling of confidence – give us the framework out of which we see god ahead of us, beckoning us forward with one hand, and reaching back with the other to grasp us firmly with love.

posted by Cory L. Kemp @ 3:44 PM