God has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
1 Peter 1:3
Hope is a fragile plant reaching towards the sun, whose rays are radiated through the attention and care we have found in so many of the people, events and circumstances that make us who we are.
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The disposition called for is not more certainty over articles of belief but more openness to everything that makes up our lives. Such generosity of spirit faces the worst and still responds to hope’s call – faces the worst and wakes up to some kind of “second truth”.
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This energizes us to work to make a difference in what is, for too many, a “culture of despair”.
Living in hope is living one step at a time – as pilgrims, living in the tension between what is already given and what is yet to be given.
“To live in hope is to be in the energy field of the future”.
Christiaan Mostert
Paul says that “Christ [is] in you, the hope of glory.”
Colossians 1:27
Our future, Jesus Christ, has already appeared, showing us who we are becoming.
Hope as a noun describes what we hope for. Hope as a verb is how we hope. Hope is a very close cousin to faith. If faith is openness to what is, hope is willing to wait for the moment, circumstance or person to yield her secret, to reveal its truth. | Think about the way hope is “alive” in you: in the way you interact with others, work, live, with yourself, engage with the world and Church. |
Hope against hope is a kind of “wager on transcendence – a bold hope, facing reality yet seemingly flying in its face, counting on the possibility that present really is not the whole story – “nothing to lose, everything to gain”. | Can you recall moments of “hoping against hope” in your own life? |
Ernst Bloch, the Marxist, said hope “requires people who throw themselves actively into what is becoming”. Living in hope is not just thinking; it involves choices and action. “Hope is the knowledge that we can choose. (Jonathan Sacks) It is “building for a new tomorrow “ (Carlo Caretto) – a “task to be done”. (SimonTugwell) | Where are you being called to hope? In what ways are you a “bearer of hope” for others? |
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit
Romans 15:13
God as the source of hope; God characterized by hope.
Paul’s prayer is for a new way of being human – what Walter Bruggemann calls a “new humanness – rooted in holiness [affirming God’s freedom to be God as our source of hope] and practised in neighbourliness [where our lives are characterized by hope in relation to each other].”
For a printable PDF of this meditation click on the link below.
