In keeping with the first Sunday of Advent, I have been mindful of the concept of "hope." Hope is one of the themes of Advent. I think that "hope" is rarely something contemplated or reflected upon the average person's life.
The meaning of the word.
I am not being original in this but according to Webster, hope is a feeling that something wanted is possible, and confidence. Hope is looking forward to the future and does not look backward to the past.
When Do We Hope?
It seems that we hope when we are not in a good spot. We tend to hope when we are not feeling good, miserable, or are anxious. Maybe something bad is predicted or expected to happen (such as a employer laying off workers or the "Fiscal Cliff") and we desire an exception to occur. Maybe a loved one just died and a piece of us hopes that we are in the middle of a bad dream and we will wake up and the person will be there (this is part of the denial stage of grief).
We tend to engage in hope when we are not in control. We hope when an object, outcome or action is to happen sometime in the future. We do not control what happens tomorrow . . . no one knows what happens until it happens.
Sometimes we hope for something that we cannot get a clear timeframe on when something is to happen. Many hope and wait for the love of our life to come. Some of us hope for a job. Some of us hope for the promotion we have worked so hard in our current employer.
Sometimes we hope for the impossible against our better judgment. This usually includes hoping for acceptance from your critical parent. Maybe it is hoping that Aunt Phyllis will at least smile and be nice at the holiday and not find someway to make a scene at your holiday gathering.
When Do We Give Up Hope?
People give up when they are depressed or when they feel that they have been hoping for the wrong thing. It can be bad and then again it can be good.
When someone is depressed, they feel stuck and possibly suicidal . . . and give up hope. Only when they start to feel hope do they recover. I have had many depressed patients who had given up hope and feel that they were up against a big black wall. By accident, years ago I told one patient that I offered them a message of hope and that they could get better. When that patient was being discharged from my program, they said that my offering of hope helped them begin to recover. (You bet I started making that statement a habit.)
On the other hand, sometimes we discover that we are hoping for the wrong things. We find that we are waiting for something that is not going to happen. We then surrender to the reality that it is not going to happen. We grieve and make a choice to move on. (I wonder how many people have gone to Hollywood and then went crawling back to their hometown in humility that their dreams were dashed?)
In reality, many people still keep some of their unrealistic hopes in corners of their minds. Many hope that the estranged family member will return and apologize. Many hope that they can become a celebrity. Many hope that their lottery numbers win. I think that it is part of human nature.
The Spiritual Hope of Christmas
While I have not particularly sought to proselytize, I will say that if you are looking for hope in Christmas, then you probably need to examine the situation you find yourself in.
Christmas is a celebration that is more theological at its core than anything and part of the theology of Christmas is the spiritual hope for the world. In making a general, theological statement, the world is a fallen place where bad things happen, and Christ is the redeemer to save it. Jesus Christ is the hope of the world.
Sometimes we become mindful of how bad we are as people. We think about all of our bad points and how evil and rotten we can be . . . and have been. That is when we can be open to looking for hope in deliverance. The Bible tells us in a number of places within its pages that God loved us first in sending Jesus to earth to be that deliverer, and in him we can have hope and can be made renewed and clean.
It is challenging to look at spiritual matters. Life in the 21st century does not lend itself to spiritual reflection. We are very busy people in the western world who tend to be driven to produce and be busy and not think about the spiritual. We become numb to most matters of hope, and we only end up hoping when our expectations crash. It is usually when our expectations crash, and when logic fails that we are open to the spiritual and the miraculous. We hunger for something that knowledge just cannot fill, and that is the spiritual part of us.
Hope. Real people do it.
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