Thoughts on Hope

 Hope has been always prevalent in our lives. The word became a campaign slogan during the last presidential campaign. (The promise that government will provide heaven on earth). It’s become essentially meaningless, or only means specific things to specific people or groups.

We all hope for things. Usually it’s for stuff, or the means to get stuff, or to be released from something causing us pain or discomfort, or an event that will benefit us.  These things I don’t think of so much as hope but wishes, dreams and fantasy. What they have in common is they’re secular and about the self.

What’s lost in our secular society is where the idea of hope comes from; it’s other meaning is faith based. Understanding that is what can give hope a working meaning, not a fantasy for the future.  Hope is an expectation, something we yearn for or anticipate. It comes from the Hebrew “Tiqvah”. That in turn comes from “Qavah” meaning to wait for. Originally Tiqvah meant “to stretch like a rope”. The word shows up thirty three times in the Bible.

In Joshua is the story of the House of Rahab, where some of his spies hid out when in Acacia Grove. Rahab came under suspicion and soldiers were sent to investigate. In this story, there were two men she was hiding and when asked lied to the soldiers about them. They escaped by dropping a rope from her house over the wall of the city. Rahab knew the men were from the Jews outside the city, were sent by God, and that they were going to invade. She wanted assurances that her family would survive when the Jews took the city. The said to her: “…unless, when we come into the land, you bind this line of scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and unless you bring your father, your mother, your brothers, and all your father’s household to your own home.” The red cord would be the identifier to the Jewish army which house was hers’, and to let it be. Symbolically the red cord represents Christ’s redemption of us. We just need to hold on to Him. 

We have the rope of redemption, which is our hope. It’s not something based on fantasy or wishes; it’s founded in God’s promise to us. Hope that God will redeem us; guide our future through Grace and our acceptance of Christ. Hope in this sense is a certainty. If we allow God to guide our lives, we’ll get a good outcome, which is Him. It’s hope based in faith, and that faith in turn is confidence in the future, not a projection of our own wishes and fantasies of self fulfillment.

It’s hard sometimes to determine, or even better, to discern, between what’s our wishes and God’s grace and guidance. Those of us that have the good sense and good fortune to know God, understand that hope is based on His certainty, is not self based, and patience and prayer will fulfill His hopes for us.

That’s how the future that will pan out for us, not with the hope for stuff we wish for.