Hope Trades in Futures

"Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." (Romans 8:24(b)- 25 ESV )

Hope is the ‘not yet’ of ‘now and not yet.’ If faith is about today, then hope is about tomorrow. We need both, equally. The apostle Paul is quite clear when he says that hope that is seen is not hope, because no one hopes for what he sees. 

Hope is an essential forward seeing and apprehending function. This hope brings the future into our field of vision; we see what will yet be, what God has promised, beyond this pale existence into the light of Christ’s fullness. It is this that fills us with peace and joy in believing. Oh, for that day. 

To be without hope is to be half dead whilst we live. People without hope give up. This was observed first-hand in the inhumane conditions of concentration camps in WW2 by the celebrated Jewish psychiatrist, Victor Frankl. He saw that people who gave up hope were the first to perish (if, that is, they weren’t sent to their deaths), and that those who could see beyond the inhumanity and degradation of their incarceration were much more likely to survive. Hope is that important. 

If we look forward to nothing it doesn’t bode well for us, nothing will spur us on, nothing will capture the momentum of our latent energies to take us beyond where and what we are. Hope takes us forward. Losing hope is losing the future, and to stop living for something is to end up living for no-thing. It seems we are put together to look forward, with hope. Hope energizes and completes us. 

This is - Hope Reframed.