Hope On!!

                                            

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.