some thoughts on hope

It's easy to lose hope in a world where there is so much fear and ugliness--it's everywhere. Yet, I have lived my life essentially untouched by any real personal tragedy. Still, I have seen a couple friends my age lose parents, something you don't expect so early in your life; daily I read about war, starvation, climate change, environmental destruction; and more recently I've had to deal with the difficulties and pain that come with supporting you love who has suffered terrible personal trauma. I've not been untouched by struggle and sorrow.

Because I am an adult, I feel that I should be used to the realities of the world and thus I should be able to deal with it. And I guess I am used to it, but I am so easily discouraged when I look around me. Occasionally I struggle to see beauty and goodness even though I know they exist if I only would have the eyes to see and the ears to hear; with this struggle, hope can seem fleeting at best. When faced with tragedy and suffering I think our first instinct is to give in to feelings of hopelessness because it demands nothing of us; from my experience, being pessimistic and abandoning hope is easy whereas fostering hope can take real determination and perseverance.

For me, hope is an intentional posture, a choice, and it often demands effort, focus, and a lot of prayer to maintain. My faith involves a strong call to hope, that hope is to inform my worldview, my day-to-day outlook, and my interactions with others. In saying this, by no means am I setting myself up as the example to follow. I haven't got it completely figured out and I likely never will...

The other day, a loved one asked me "Matt, can I borrow a bit of your hope because my supplies are running low?" That got me thinking that sometimes we go through those 'dark nights of the soul' where we need the hope of others to help sustain us. I have definitely been in that place and I'm so thankful for a number of key people who didn't lose hope (in this case for me and my future) because their hope helped get me through to the other side of that spiritual and emotional desert. I want the hope that I have to be contagious or, at the very least, to give strength to another who feels hopeless; one of the reasons why I believe that it's important to cultivate the virtue of hope is that it might help minister to others who feel they have none.

An anonymous quote I saw recently read "hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible." I pray that I am constantly guided by that and that God gives me the strength to continue grasping on to hope.