Love always hopes
1 Corinthians 13:7
Someone (possibly his wife) once described my brother Tim as pathologically optimistic. Whilst a humorous exaggeration there is a truth to it which I find a great encouragement.
If you know someone like him you will most likely be aware that no matter the circumstance, no matter how dire, or difficult, whatever the mountain or valley, his sense of hope in people, in God, in circumstance, remains unassailed. If you have ever known anyone like this you will know that it is inspiring and on occasion infuriating. The reasons for its inspiration should be obvious, the reasons for the infuriation perhaps less so.
There is a magnetism to hope-soaked people. Something beyond charisma or wishful thinking. They have a groundedness to them that belies their situation or yours. They are not in denial or “faking it until they make it”, they are not trying to overwhelm their circumstance with the power of positive thinking. But there is an assurance in them that makes you believe (or at the very least, want to believe) that everything is going to be ok.
These people are not projecting phantom images. They are real. They weep, they know fear, they travel through the valley of the shadow of death on occasion as we all do but they are rarely if ever truly disconsolate or without hope.
Conversely, it is true that these people can be profoundly infuriating. There are few things more annoying than people whose very existence wishes to challenge our desire to wallow in the swamp of our own self pity. Because while hope will happily co-exist with sadness or joy it is not a good bedfellow of self pity. Hope quietly, gently, but persistently calls us on. Self pity by contrast, actively chooses stagnancy, and fosters an incapacity to move forward.
I encourage you church, to be a people that embrace and embody hope. That you would immerse yourself in it and become hope-soaked people. Hope in your Heavenly Father. Hope for the future He is calling and bringing you to. Hope in the joy set before us. Hope for the people to whom we have been called to be light and salt. Love always hopes.
In hope and expectancy of what lies ahead
Stephen Hickson