“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13

Hope

What would we do if we did not have hope? Hope is necessary to the human spirit. Without hope we feel senseless and purposeless, and lack of hope has the power to destroy us. No words are more devastating than, “There is no hope.” But there are no hopeless situations, only people who have become hopeless about them. According to Alexander Pope, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” There is something in our human nature that believes a situation will improve no matter how bad things get. Hope is having something to look forward to, something waiting for us. It is the foundation of our faith. Faith cannot be sustained without hope. There is something in the Christian hope that all the shadows cannot dispel. It is filled with the conviction that God is alive, and there is no situation that is hopeless as long as there is the power of God. Throughout all the long, cold winters there is the promise that the days will get longer, the world will warm up and the flowers will bloom once again. And we can hold fast to that hope.

lhart@gwi.net