THE STRENGTH OF HOPE
TODAY: Take a moment and reflect on these statements about
hope. How can you draw upon our faith in God to help you face
the "monsters" that are an inevitable part of our human journey?
Consider this poem and how you have adjusted your thinking since
Sept. 11, 2001.
Hope,
Gave us help
When the sadness hit.
The planes carrying people
And people who worked in the buildings.
But blame is no cause, even though those 19 men
Did it in the name of God.
Hate is what we gave.
America is our name,
"Stand strong" or "in God's name we trust."
Well, we were weakened.
Even though the people died.
Just think they are in God's hands, and they are not lost.
They are saved.
– Grace Oakes, age 11 |
Last winter, I had a truly remarkable experience. I facilitated a class in
our Adult Sunday School called “Journeys of Hope.” Each week we
reflected upon the story of a “hero” who had faced an incredible
“monster.” The authors of the stories we discussed included Viktor
Frankl, James Stockdale, Barbara Glacel, Norman Cousins, Studs Turkel,
Henri Nouwen and Lisa Beamer. These people related stories about
life-threatening diseases, survival in POW camps, depression and the
loss of loved ones. All of our heroes returned from their journeys the
same, but different. All of them in one way or another had survived by
placing their lives in the hands of God.
The strength of their hope is captured in a passage from one of
the stories we read . . . the story of a woman in Northern Virginia who
survived cancer: “I had a feeling of something pulling me,” wrote
Barbara Pate Glacel in Hitting the Wall: A Memoir of a Cancer Journey.
“I had to write it . . . to give hope. People of all faiths were praying for
me.”
And yet, it wasn’t the passages we read that had the greatest
effect on our understanding of hope. Rather, it was listening to the
stories told by members of the class. I asked them to capture some of
the things that we discovered about hope. Here is what they shared:
• When I project into the future what I want to happen, that is not
hope . . . that is my wish. Hope comes from my belief that God knows
what I need and for me to accept that it is His wish.
• Hope comes from faith in God by providing the strength to find love
in all things . . . . Hope is not related to expectations . . . . There is a
need to accept circumstances to have hope . . . to move through/past
them . . . . I am exploring the need for suffering to grow faith, hope and
love.
• I cannot give hope to those who are suffering, but through listening,
caring and love, I can help them discover the hope within.
• Hope comes from outside yourself, so to give hope, you have to get
hope. To get hope, you must look at others who have hope. God is the
inspiration to get this circle going.
• Helping Others Perceive Encouragement . . . . The desire and search
for a future good is difficult but not impossible to attain with God’s
help . . . . Something I can tell my child if asked: That no matter what
happens — good or bad — in the end, we will face God and live eternally
— in peace — so hold onto that faith and know that God is
there.
• There is a distinction between hope and optimism. Optimism is perhaps
an outlook or state of mind and possibly cannot be learned.
Hope, on the other hand, is a state of being and can be learned. It
involves facing reality, keeping things in perspective and, for the
Christian, always remembering that God is the source of all of our
hope and that nothing, nothing, nothing can separate us from His love.
— Chuck Appleby
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