Hope: (noun) confident desire

On a late night round with one of my fellow Resident Assistants, I was asking him some typical "get to know you" questions. One of these questions included the inevitable "What are three things that are very important to you?" Long story short, that question was turned back upon me.

Initially, I would have spit out the typical, "God, family, friends" answer. But instead, and I forget the first two things mentioned, I included hope.

Why? What is hope? This intangible, warm, fuzzy word. Why is it important?

Recently, I got hung up on my own mortality. There is something so frightening about realizing that one day, I will die. I wonder what that will be like, to have life leave my body. To have the world go dim. Is there hope? When I thought about this all, I found myself wondering "Is this whole Christianity thing real?"

All of the eggs into one basket. All of my hope into one man.

Is there something after death?

Hope was brought up on a Sunday morning recently by my pastor. Hope gives substance to faith.

Hope is vital. Without the hope that Jesus was who He said He was, then what hope is there?

A few more reflections on hope. One is from Romans 5:1-5.

"Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because god has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us."

Hope does not disappoint us. It helps us to finish the race.

A final thought, from Glenn Hatcher's book Why God Thinks He Can Use You, hope is open-eyed dreams. He pulls in this magnificent quote from T.E. Lawrence -

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds awake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible."

I'm afraid I don't have much of a conclusion to offer. Just thoughts.