Hope in Focus

You can dance in a hurricane, but only if you’re standing in the eye. 

-Brandi Carlile, The Eye

Since we have such a hope, we are very bold. 

-The Apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 3:12

I’ve been thinking a lot about hope lately—how necessary and hard it is to hold close. 

Sometimes hope is a hot potato. You just need to not drop it, or it’ll fall on the floor and get dirty and smashed. But on the other hand, maybe hope will burn us if we hang on it too long. If hope is not realized, not seen, will it harm us, dent us, make us misshapen? And if hope is too hot to handle, does that mean it’s just too much to hope for? 

Maybe hope is more like one of my lost earrings. I know it’s there somewhere—I just can’t find it. Must be buried in a drawer or under some furniture. It will look really nice when I finally find it, use it how it was meant to be used. Someday it will surface. But for now, I’ll just have to live without it. 

Brightening up our movie collection with happy lights. 

This elusive thing called hope seems, then, so dear and fragile. It’s also one of the great facets of the faith-the Apostle Paul says that after everything else in life, three things remain: faith, hope, and love. So in addition to being a bit slippery to hang on to, it’s essential to following Jesus as we travel this world. Makes it a bit tricky, doesn’t it? Hope gets rained out, gets benched when we need it the most. Circumstances and choices collapse on top of our wishes and desires, snuffing them out, breaking them in half. But without hope, we merely limp along. We get by. And we wonder where the abundant life, the good life went. We then set aside our expectations so we won’t keep stumbling over them. Hopes may get moved to a “someday thing” or a far-off thing in our minds, and we move on to functioning. 

When life gets rumpled, when it gets stuck in a seemingly endless montage of gray days and rough nights no matter the weather, how do we relight the candle of hope? How do we set it bravely on top of our lives? How do we make our lives receptive to hope and expectation? 

I think that it does come back to putting one foot in the other, even though it seems like a poor substitute for felt hope, for realized expectations. At first it seems almost false to “just function,” as though we’re putting on an act. But when hope is absent or faint, it makes sense we must practice having it. We must practice hope, even when it feels foreign or nonsensical. Just how I know my lost earring is there somewhere, we must live in the reality of hope, even though we can’t always feel it or see it. When we visit with friends, we are practicing hope. When we read a favorite book or start a new hobby or project, we are practicing hope. When we say “I love you” or “I care about you” to the loved ones in our lives, we are practicing hope. When we plan our future with open hands and open minds, knowing that things can change at any time, we can do so in hope. 

When we are practicing hope and expectation, we can more easily look to the Maker of Hope and Peace. We can remember that Jesus is indeed the Author and Creator of Hope. We can remember all the things He’s done for us in the past and use them to light our way. We can look forward to what He’s going to do in the future with us and through us. When we don’t even know what to hope for, we can rest in the fact that Jesus intercedes for us and knows what we need. We can rest in His love, knowing that He can use us in all our weaknesses, even when we don’t have much strength that we can give. Although we can’t summon hope like a magic spell, we can ground ourselves in remembrance and thankfulness. And when we do, I have a suspicion that hope will begin to bloom, as they say, where we’re planted.