What is Hope?

Listen to yourself for a single day and count how many times you use the word “hope.” I hope the traffic isn't too bad on my way to work. I hope the test comes back clear. I hope she calls. I hope my team wins. I hope I win the lottery. I hope this restaurant is as good as the reviews. I hope the bathroom at the gas station is clean (we've all been there).

Then, perhaps on Sunday, you sing a hymn or hear a reading and say, with equal ease, “My hope is in the Lord.”

Same word. Two entirely different things.

We do this with “love,” too. We talked about this yesterday. I love pizza, I love my wife, I love God. The English language hands us one small word and asks it to carry everything from a passing appetite to the deepest commitment of the soul.

So we should ask honestly: when Scripture speaks of hope, what does it mean? And how is it different from the hope I feel holding a scratch-off ticket at the gas station?

 

Wishing and Hoping Are Not the Same Thing

The lottery kind of hope has three features.

First, it is aimed at an outcome. Second, it is uncertain; indeed, the uncertainty is the whole point. Third, it does not change me.

If I win, I am the same person with more money. If I lose, I toss the ticket and buy another. This is really wishing, and wishing is not necessarily sinful (though it can be). It is simply small.

Biblical hope is different on every count. Its object is not an outcome but a Person. Its ground is not probability but promise. And it changes the one who holds it.

The Greek word the New Testament uses is elpis. In ordinary Greek it's actually quite similar to our English word for hope. It could mean expectation of any kind, good or bad.

But in the hands of Paul, Peter, and the author of Hebrews it takes on a fixed and radiant meaning: confident expectation rooted in what God has already done.

Peter calls it "a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). Notice the direction. Christian hope does not look forward into fog. It looks backward at an empty tomb and then forward with confidence.

The future is secure because the decisive event has already happened.

Paul puts it even more sharply: "and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us" (Romans 5:5).

The lottery ticket disappoints almost everyone. This hope disappoints no one. Why? Not because we are optimistic people, but because the thing we hope for, God himself, has already begun to arrive. The Spirit poured into our hearts is the down payment.

 

A Cord in the Window

The Hebrew word for hope is even more interesting.

Tiqvah comes from a root that means “to wait” or “to stretch out,” and it is related to the word for a cord or rope, something pulled taut under tension.

In fact, the very same word appears in Joshua 2:18, where Rahab is told to tie a crimson cord in her window so that she and her household will be spared when Jericho falls. Her hope was, quite literally, a rope hanging from a window: visible, fragile-looking, insignificant by appearance but utterly sufficient because of the promise attached to it.

That is what hope feels like from the inside. Not a warm glow. A cord under tension.

You are holding on to something, and something is holding on to you.

The author of Hebrews reaches for a similar image: "We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain" (Hebrews 6:19).

An anchor is not decoration. But it is useful, even necessary, in a storm. Its strength depends entirely on what it is fastened to.

Our anchor is fastened not to the seabed but to the sanctuary of heaven, where Christ has already entered.

 

Hope Is Not Optimism

This is where the distinction becomes pastoral rather than academic.

Optimism is a temperament; hope is a virtue.

Optimism says, “Things will probably work out.” Hope says, “God is faithful, whether or not things work out the way I want.”

Optimism touts the "power of positive thinking," and there are all kinds of self-help books on it. Hope relies on the "power of God," and in it, He is our only help.

The prophet, most likely Jeremiah, who wrote Lamentations was not an optimist. He was sitting in the rubble of Jerusalem. And yet he wrote: "But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:21-23).

Hope here is an act of the will. There is a kind of defiance against circumstances here. He calls to mind. He chooses to remember God’s character in the middle of loss. Grief and hope are not opposites. The sit together, in the same chair.

This is why the great contemplative teachers insisted that hope has a purifying work to do.

St. John of the Cross taught that hope empties the memory of its clinging to created things so that it can be filled with God alone.

St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the proper object of hope is God himself, not the gifts he gives. When my hope is fixed on outcomes, every disappointment is a small death. When my hope is fixed on God, disappointments become, strangely, a kind of clarification.

They show me where I have set my anchor in the sand.

Paul says it plainly: "For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience" (Romans 8:24-25).

Hope and waiting belong together.

St. Augustine confessed that our heart is restless until it rests in God (Confessions I.1), and that restlessness, rightly understood, is hope: the ache that refuses to be satisfied by anything less.

 

Living With the Anchor

So how do we move from lottery hope to anchor hope? A few practices:

Name your hopes honestly. At the end of the day, ask: what did I actually hope for today? Most of us will find a list of outcomes. That is not wrong, but it is revealing. It can show us where we might have too many worldly attachments, things we rely on that are bound to disappoint. Then ask a second question: if none of these come to pass, is my hope in God still intact? If the answer is no, you have found where your anchor is really set.

Practice remembering. Follow Lamentations. When anxiety rises, deliberately “call to mind” what God has already done, in Scripture and in your own life. Hope is strengthened by memory of faithfulness, not by predictions about the future.

Learn to wait. Take Psalm 130 as a prayer: "I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope" (Psalm 130:5). Sit in silence for five minutes without asking for anything. Simply wait for God as one waits for the dawn. This trains the soul to hold the cord taut.

Be ready to explain it. Peter tells believers to be ready to give "an accounting for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15). People will notice when you grieve without despair and rejoice without grasping. They will notice when you suffer with grace. When they ask, you will have something to say, and it will not be about lottery tickets.

A short note on suffering with grace. When I used to be a pastor, I spent a lot of time visiting shut-ins at nursing homes. Some of the people I visited there were the most graceful, beautiful, faithful, and even joyful souls I'd ever met. Others were the most bitter, angry, resentful, and untrusting people I'd ever encountered.

And interestingly, the degree in which one suffered from frailty, or dementia, had nothing to do with it. One of the most joyful ladies I used to visit couldn't walk, needed help to even get to the bathroom. There were times she forgot my name, or what year it was. But she always had the biggest smile on her face. When her mind wasn't cooperating, and her memories faltered, she did not feel distress. She actually laughed about it. What was the difference between her, and the other person I visited who could still get around, was still sharp of mind, but was miserable every moment of the day?

Hope was the difference.

One kind of person, knowing they were in the very last chapter of their earthly lives, reflected back on God's faithfulness, on the beauty of the lives they were given, and looked forward from that into heaven. The other kind of person looked at their present circumstances, their nearing death, and turned their constant existence into a living hell.

I often reflect on that. What kind of "old person" do I want to be? Will I cling to the worldly comforts I used to have, the liberty I had in my youth, the frustration that I cannot simply turn back the clock... or will I have grace and hope, anticipating heaven, with gratitude for the life God has given me? Will I fight my family tooth-and-nail against going to such a facility if my present needs demand it, clinging to my imagined freedom? Or, will I accept it in grace, gladly willing to endure whatever loss it represents for the sake of greater glory, with even joy?

The lottery hope buys a ticket and waits for the numbers. The anchor hope has already received the Spirit and waits for the Lord. One disappoints nearly everyone. The other, Paul promises, disappoints no one at all. And this changes us. In every season of life.