What is Hope?

What is hope?

Hope is one of those words in our culture that is essentially meaningless.  It’s often used to project a good feeling or a wishful outcome.

Hope is one of those words in our culture that is essentially meaningless.  It’s often used to project a good feeling or a wishful outcome.  The aspiration is baseless.  Not rooted in anything other than human sentiment. On its own, this hope can’t deliver, no matter how well-meaning it is.  Therefore, some of us end up believing our lives are left to some whim of fate or cosmic force.

This view can be especially unsettling when it comes from friction in relationships.  Do I really hope things in my fractured relationships will turn out all right?  Hope in what?  The process?  My attempt at perfection and control? The other person’s good intentions or efforts to figure things out?

Do you see how hope simply becomes a throw-away word, without any foundation or substance?

The thing is, hope is not an invention of our modern, feel-good culture.  It existed way before you or I were born.  Its origin is God.  To have hope rooted in God means that nothing is set in stone. No one or nothing is beyond repair.  Anything can happen.  Change and transformation are real despite evidence to the contrary. 

But it’s not real because I say so or because I’m writing about it.  Hope is real because it’s located in Someone.  In God.  In fact, according to the Bible, God is hope.  

You’re our last hope. Is it not true that in you the orphan finds mercy? “I will heal their waywardness. I will love them lavishly. My anger is played out. I will make a fresh start with Israel. He’ll burst into bloom like a crocus in the spring. He’ll put down deep oak tree roots, he’ll become a forest of oaks . . . From now on I’m the one who answers and satisfies him. I am like a luxuriant fruit tree. Everything you need is to be found in me” (Hosea 14:3,4-6, 8, MSG).

Here we see that hope is not only found in God, but it also involves more of His character, like mercy, satisfaction, and flourishing.  Look at verse 3, the Hebrew word for “mercy” is racham.  It’s an emotive word, encompassing compassion, tenderness, and soothing.

Do you think this is what hope includes?

Have you ever thought of God like this?    

Check out verse 8.  God tells us He’s a luxuriant fruit tree. Meaning, He’s alive!  He’s producing!  In fact, everything we need is found in Him. 

So, in what perplexing situation do you need hope?  How does knowing God change the way you think, pray, feel, and respond to it?

Pause right now and turn the verses in Hosea into a prayer, expressing all that’s on your heart and mind to God.