What is “hope”?
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A lot this presidential campaign season has been made about “hope”. If you happened to attend church today, and you’re in Series “A” of the Three-Year Lectionary, you heard Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chapter 8.
There is a section, on “hope.”
“Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
A lot can be said about this simple verse. And I have a feeling a lot of us will look at it differently.
I am hopeful for peace, a clean environment, educated children, economic prosperity, a healthy population, and all the things that I think most would “hope” for. But I also know that to get there requires hard work, patience, understanding, research and compromise. For, other than salvation, hope will only get you so far; it takes a society’s enterprise, character, and abilities to take “hope” from being empty rhetoric to becoming tangible reality.
In other words, what we hope and dream for doesn’t happen over night. It takes work and patience. I wonder how many people this election cycle have that maturity and patience?
Star Wars, episode IV?
Definitely an interesting verse. The surface reading could be one of passivity, though only if removed from the context of submission to God’s will.
Well said. There is an interesting dynamic between hope and faith, and both can be positive forces to provide the fuel for action. Much better those than fear and anger.
Amen