Hope Rises: Make Your Life, Love, and Leadership SoarSample

Hope Deals in Reality 

Hope isn’t denial. It’s not sticking your head in the sand and praying that the storm soon passes, leaving you unscathed. Hope embraces reality, no matter how difficult the circumstances may be. Hope doesn’t close its eyes in hard times. Hope deals with reality head on. Hope sees the unseen and finds the peace to persevere.

We all want circumstances to work out for our good. We want to be successful and happy. Reaching such a state will not come simply through positive visualization. The fact is that life is filled with challenges. And some challenges are so dire that it’s impossible to put a positive spin on a horrific situation. Sometimes our limits are tested. In such times, we simply come to the end or ourselves. And that’s not altogether a bad thing.

Faith opens us up to possibilities beyond self. When a person relies wholly on oneself, he soon discovers that by himself he has a limited capacity in what he can make of himself. There is an awareness in the depths of each human heart that we have a limited capacity to fulfill our potential and chart our own destiny.

There is an unsettling suspicion in the human spirit that there is more to life than our finite experience. Faith allows the possibility to connect with the divine and experience the unseen.

Hope dwells in the domain of the divine. Hope springs eternal from the soul that is not limited by the conflict nor the circumstances of that which is mortal. In other words, we see God at work most clearly when we can’t see through our circumstances.

When you feel hopeless, you’re much closer to hope than you may think. Hope comes from the realization that God is bigger than your difficulties. When you come to the end of yourself, you can choose to lean into the unlimited resources of your heavenly Father. Peace comes when you embrace the reality of your situation and then find rest in the fact that God is far bigger. Hope rises when you remember that he is quite capable to see you through.