What Is Hope ?

Hope [ Old English hopian (to hope)]. Anticipating something good to come in the future. (One does not hope for what one already has, though one can hope it continues.)

The Bible describes what hope means, and says what it is there for. God's followers hope for God's will be done on earth as in heaven. Or, said another way, the Christian hopes for the fruition of what has already begun, the full arrival of God's Kingdom. We pin our hopes on the God of that Kingdom.

The New Testament word for hope is various forms of Greek elpis. The closest Hebrew words are the verb forms of yachal. Paul wrote in several places about what hope leads to or makes : patience, courage, joy. Hope makes us stable, and we are saved in hope. It is one of the three things which last : faith, hope, and love.

Christians hope in God's promises, and especially hope in the God who delivers on His promises. The promises of God to us are found all over Scripture. Hoping in the wrong thing or the wrong source is eternally fatal. (It is even a kind of idolatry.) Hope can seem like a trick, and indeed, misplaced hope can be the cruelest of tricks, like a lying lover. Hope drives our actions and goals -- if we didn't have hope we'd succeed, why bother to strive for them, for what good would it do? If anything gets accomplished, it is through hope. When we support freedom and justice, we send out ripples of hope. Hope is very hard to kill, and even when it dies, like Christ it has a way of coming to life.

Quotations on Hope

"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."
Vaclav Havel

"The labors of the farm do not seem strange to the farmer; the storm at sea is not unexpected by the sailor; sweat causes no wonder to the hired laborer; and so to those who have chosen to live the life of piety the afflictions of this world are not unforeseen. Nay, to each of the aforesaid is joined a labor that is appropriate and well known to those who share it -- a labor that is not chosen for its own sake, but for the enjoyment of expected blessings. For hopes, which hold and weld together man's entire life, give consolation for the hardships which fall to the lot of each of these."
Basil the Great

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life."
Proverbs 13:12, NRSV

Hope as a Gift of God

Hope is a gift of the Spirit, too. Not a 'charism' in the sense Paul was speaking of, but it is something given by God. The evidence: one of the few things one can say across-the-board about those with a vigorous view of the Spirit is that virtually all of them are full of hope. The Spirit tells them about Christ. Christ makes forgiveness happen. Our relationship with God becomes one of being God's child, not one of a rebel. And nothing the world can dish out can get rid of this gift. Life becomes something to be savored, even to be dared (within God's purposes), even as the world around them destroys itself through its rebellion against God. The gift of hope shines light into inner depression and outer oppression, saying that all is not so bleak, God has already won, and in the end, so have all of us.

You can also hope to find the dictionary definitions of 'hope'.