Hope is a Gift and a Discipline.

What’s the difference between hope and wishful thinking? When we want things to change for the better we can either sit around waiting for that to happen, or do something that might make our hopes more possible. Hope is active, wishful thinking is passive. Hope tries to face reality and works at changing the way things are, whereas wishful thinking just tries to ignore reality and day-dream.

Christian hope is the opposite of wishful thinking. Here’s why. Wishful thinking is that immature resentment that the world doesn’t work the way we want it to. Wishful thinking is the mentality of those who buy a Euro-lottery ticket and imagine a different life made possible by being the one in a 100 million who wins 100 million.

Unlike wishful thinking, Christian hope doesn’t reject the world as it is, Hopeful Christians see the world as God-created, God-loved and the place where God is actively present. So as Christians we hope in God, the God revealed in Jesus. God is light shining in the darkest corners of the world. God is love challenging the hate and fear that leaves human communities broken, jagged edged and at odds with each other.  

But Christian hope doesn’t just happen. Hope is God’s gift, stirred and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, who lifts our eyes beyond the way things are to the God whose purpose is to redeem, reconcile and make things new. We are called to live hopefully. How do we do that? It’s not as if you can give yourself a good talking to and decide to be more hopeful.

No, but you can give God a good talking to and pour out your heart before a faithful God and loving Father. That’s exactly what John Calvin, the great Reformer of Geneva, advised in one of his sermons. It’s good advice.

“We should ask God to increase our hope when it is small, awaken it when it is dormant, confirm it when it is wavering, strengthen it when it is weak, and raise it up when it is overthrown.”

Calvin was light years away from the power of positive thinking, or those one liners that say happiness is a choice, or that control of positive or negative feelings is up to us. We are human, and low spirits, soul weariness, anxiety about the future or disappointment about the past are quite normal experiences.

Feeling down is not helped by feeling guilty about feeling down! In fact the Psalmist is very reassuring on this.

“The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust.” (Psalm 103.14)

And then there is this: “Why are you downcast O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.” (Psalm 42.

What Calvin is saying is that our hopefulness is vitally linked to prayer. We hope in God, and that makes all the difference. We learn to live hopefully not by wishful thinking, but by prayerful thinking to the Lord of all hopefulness. When we bring our anxieties and fears, our low spirits and weariness to God, we do so with assurance. Because whether we feel it or not, God’s compassion supports us, and God’s power surrounds us, and God’s purposes remain faithful and true to his promises.

All my hope on God is founded;
he doth still my trust renew,
me through change and chance he guideth,
only good and only true.
God unknown, he alone
calls my heart to be his own.

I’ve found that John Calvin’s words, with small adjustment, can be made into a prayer – try it, it goes something like this:

“Compassionate Father, and God of all hope,

increase our hope when it is small,

awaken it when it is dormant,

confirm it when it is wavering,

strengthen it when it is weak,

and raise it up when it is overthrown.”

That might not be a bad prayer with which to begin and end the day. Try it for a week - and hope for the best, God’s best, all of which is yours in Christ.

Comments

[Angela Almond]

Thank you Jim. A great word of encouragement!