Have you ever had fun simply planning a vacation trip? Ever since my wife and I purchased a camper van, we have enjoyed poring over maps of the West planning our next great tour. Just dreaming about the trip is almost as fun as actually going on the trip. In the same way, young couples enjoy looking at floor plans of houses they cannot yet afford. They enjoy simply imagining their "dream home." This kind of activity of mind and spirit is a very important part of being human, and is the way God designed us. It is a living spiritual activity called HOPE.
Hope is a vital force that brings wholeness to our lives, and along with faith and love, abides forever as part of our eternal human existence. Hope is the happy anticipation of good. Hope is a favorable and confident expectation for the future. Hope is being happy simply dreaming about and anticipating something good to come, a mental blueprint (like a house plan) projected on the screen of our imagination. For the Christian, that hope is not wishful thinking, but is based on the promises of God.
Unfortunately, a majority of the human race live in quiet desperation. The Bible describes those who don't know Christ as "strangers from the covenants of promise (the Scriptures), having no hope and without God in the world." They live in a kind of negative hope called despair, the unhappy dread of evil, an unfavorable and fear-producing expectation of bad things not yet seen in the future, much of which may never come to pass. They are depressed and unhappy just thinking and imagining bad things that they expect are about to happen to them.
Even in the most prosperous and free civilization that has ever existed on this planet, there are folks in a state of hopelessness. Admittedly there is the constant pressure of real problems people contend with every day. Financial problems, health problems, job problems, and relationship problems are not just imagined. They are real and need to be dealt with. But the thing that makes these problems difficult is the mental pressure they can produce. If we could work on our problems with a clear, steady, peaceful mind full of hope, problems would not be "problems", they would be "challenges."
There is an antidote to the mental pressure that comes from life's problems. The Word of God, meditated upon, fed into the human consciousness, can dissolve worry and fear. It can produce a living hope that allows us to remain joyful even in difficult circumstances. My parents and grandparents lived through the great Depression in the geographic center of the Dust Bowl, but never lost their hope. Their minds were held steady because they constantly dwelt upon God and His provision.
But too often we don't remedy these problems by feeding our thought life with the positive promises of God. Instead we Americans come home from a trying day at work, turn on the evening news, and are hit for another hour with intractable problems. Then we turn on prime time sitcoms and sit and listen to profanity and triviality for another couple of hours. We listen to cynical people yelling at each other and call it entertainment. We medicate ourselves with alcohol. Then we drag ourselves off to bed, take a sleeping pill, and all without ever having a moment of quiet reflection. No wonder we wake up the next day depressed and as tired as when we went to bed.
The spiritually-minded Christian finds in the Word of God an inexhaustible supply of hope. Hope is the anchor of our souls. We know that will live eternally with God. We know that He is present with us today providing peace and wisdom to help us solve life's problems. We put our hope in the infinite wisdom, power, and love of God, and in the final triumph of His justice on earth. All things will ultimately be put right. The kingdom of this world is becoming the kingdom of our God, and He shall reign forever.
@ copyright 1998 by Scott H. Northrup. All rights reserved.