Hope

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about hope. 1 Corinthians 13:12 says “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Well I’ve blogged a lot (and I mean a lot) about faith, and have been trying to write more about love, but what about hope? Well I haven’t really given much thought to hope, life’s been pretty good to me, what have I needed to think extensively about hope for? Well these past two years have been a roller coaster for me, lots of high points down to very low points, and now I’ve seen my need. I wouldn’t say I lost hope, but like my faith I stumbled a bit. But what is hope, how can it be defined? Using my trusty thesaurus hope is similar to “expect, desire, rely on, depend on, count on, await, pray, believe, hold on to, faith, dream…” To keep it simple lots of words. To be honest I don’t really like these words. While hope definitely is looking forward to something and waiting for an event, that’s more like “Gee I sure hope…” The hope I’m thinking about (and the one Paul was writing about) is the strength you get when you’re in a tough spot, that joy that permeates through the bleak times, the light that shines in the darkness. Now when I say I lost hope I don’t mean I was hopeless, I just never gave hope much thought and was really put to the test, and still am in some ways. Yet, over the past year I’ve come to realize how important hope really is, because without it you lose your faith in God, and your love for Him and those around you. A lot of things went wrong at the same time for me, but I never let go of that joy that can only come from God, I never gave up strength in Him, and that is what lasted me through. While things may still go wrong and will (hey life’s never perfect) you can’t lose hope, because without hope you eventually lose faith and love. If I had no hope I would have lost my faith entirely and would have lost myself in the process, they all build each other up.