Thirty years ago, William Lynch lamented: “We human beings,
who need hope more than anything else in life, have written little about it”
(Lynch, 1987:21). To be sure, therapists and theologians, psychologists and
philosophers have filled this gap since in some measure. Yet, a curious fact
remains: a much larger body of literature exists on the luminal experience we
call despair than on the life-engendering presence and function of hope.
According
to Greek mythology, the first woman on Earth,
Pandora, was given a box that she was not to open under any circumstance. Too
curious to resist, she opened it, and all of the evils of the world flew out:
hate, pain, destructiveness, starvation. When Pandora saw what she had done,
she closed the box before the last thing in there could escape. That last thing
was hope.
Hope is
the belief that circumstances in the future will be better. It's not a wish
that things will get better, but an actual belief, even when there may be no
evidence that anything will change. Hope can encompass a wide variety of
beliefs -- everything from a high school student hoping for an A in algebra to
a cancer patient hoping for a cure.
Christian hope derives its enduring and living quality out
of the historical accomplishment of God in Christ on our behalf. In the
incarnation, God entered this world of suffering and death in loving
solidarity. In the crucifixion, Christ experienced this world in its sin and
suffering reconciling it to the Father who, in the resurrection, inaugurated a
historical process that moves the world towards the fulfillment of the
eschatological promise. Hope is as light as a feather. Hope keeps all of us
together Hope is ubiquitous and free of
cost. Hope is the last thing ever lost. Since history is moving towards its
real future in God, one of the presuppositions of Christian hope is the passage
of time towards God’s promised end, an end that was already present in the
world in the resurrection of Christ. Hope
is a bright shining light which keeps darkness at the bay. Hope is gentle cold
breeze on a hot summer day. Hope is to remain positive when going gets tough. Hope
is seeking more when others think u had enough!
Just as God has taken up the humanity of the incarnate Son
in Christ’s ascension, so the believer hopes that God will take up the entire
cosmos into the Trinitarian unity of his own person so that in the end God will
be “all in all” (Eph 1:22-23).
P.S. - This was an article written by me for DSYM Youth Beats E-Paper.
