Hope Springs Eternal

Optimism, Pessimism, or somewhere in between is often considered to be just a way a person is. You may be a half-glass-full kinda person, or you may be a half-glass-empty kinda person. You may even be a "What glass?!" type person. Hope and optimism aren't PRECISELY the same thing, but they generally keep each other company. You're not gonna find a whole lot of hopeful pessimists. So what is hope exactly and why is it important?

Well, of course, in Christianity, when we're referring to hope, I think we're generally referring to the Hope of Heaven. That's a big part of what makes it an extention of Faith. We have Faith that God exists and that he cares for us, and as a result, we have the hope of eternal life in Heaven. But like Faith, I think this is generally true of hope's extention from faith in anything. Hope essentially springs from faith. If we have faith in something or someone, then the hope of a good result from that thing or that person is the effect of that faith.

That much is all pretty easy and simple. Where hope gets hard is actually having it. In many ways, hope is even more of a leap than faith is. It's groundless because it's rooted in something that's often barely grounded itself. Which is what makes it hard to believe in. But that's why I see it as a progression.

The reason it's important is this... I mentioned happiness in the previous blog about Faith. Everyone's looking for happiness. But everybody's looking for all the wrong places. Have you ever said to yourself something like, "If I can just get done with high school, I'll be happier!" or "Once I'm done with college and have a good job, I'll be happy!" or "If I can just find that special someone..." or "Once we get married..." or conversely, "Once we get divorced..." Maybe your aims are a litle lower: "Once I have that big-screen!" Whatever. Everyone seems to think that happiness is a result of circumstances, your state of being. But it's not. Happiness is a state of mind. You can only ever be as happy as you allow yourself to be.

If you focus on the horrors of the world, the sadness, the suffering, then that's going to be the center of your experience. If, however, you focus on the hope, the faith, the love... have a positive outlook, it's enough to make all the difference in the world. Hope is essentially a positive outlook, it's believing that things will work out, believing that people will come through for you (even when it doesn't and they don't; hoping still makes a difference). It's the dissolution of worry and regret, which only cause stress and pain, both physically and mentally. And that's why it's important.

And because Hope, because Hope is all about the positive side of life, Love is going to spring from Hope, in the same way that Hope springs from Faith. And that will take us into the next blog...