Hope

I want to talk to you for a moment about hope. Hope is very positive word. The emotions that are tied to the word are very powerful. Everyone wants to have hope in their lives, because hope brings with it the belief that things can get better. But if hope is built on the premise that things can be better, what does that tell us about the situation in which you will find yourself if you are to discover hope? It has to be worse than “better.”

If you’ve ever seen the film The Pursuit of Happyness, then you would remember a scene, at the depths of Chris Gardner’s despair, when he is sitting in the stairwell of a homeless shelter trying to fix his last bone density scanner by streetlight. If he is successful, he and his son will survive another month. If not, all hope is lost.

Chris completes his work on the machine, plugs it in, and flips the switch...and the light turns on! In that moment I realized: that is hope. Hope is the light of the possibility that things can get better that flickers in the depths of the soul.

Do you need hope in your life today? Then be thankful for the hard times. Have gratitude for the darkest night. Hope is for suffering, and is born from suffering; hope is found in the broken places. For it’s only when all hope is lost that it can be found.