S T A T I O N 10

“Jeremiah told us that God’s plans are not meant to harm but to give a hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). God is not simply being redundant here. Hope and future are related but distinct from one another. Hope is a vision of the future given to you in the present. And future is, well, that future fully realized. And why is it important that God give us both? Why doesn’t He just give us a future? Well, because the future is no good to us in the present, but hope is. Hope sustains us here, in the middle of a dark present, by giving us a compelling vision of the future. As Helen Keller said, “Nothing can be done without hope.” Hope keeps us walking forward.

Biblical hope, on the other hand, is a certainty about something that has not happened yet. We’re talking about fail-proof. To emphasize that, let’s take it back to the original language. The Hebrew word for hope is tikvah. It comes from the root qaveh, which means to tie or bind. The Hebrew word that means “rope” comes from this same root. The idea here is that hope is a rope that binds us to a solid object. This is what the writer of Hebrews is getting at in Hebrews 6:19, which says, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” We know the end of the story, that the end is love and restoration and victory.

How you live now is determined by your hope of what is to come. If you hope you’ll go to college, during high school you’ll put in the work necessary to get there. If you hope that Gregory Alan Isakov is as good live as he is on a recording, you’ll buy tickets for the show. If you hope that she’s going to marry you, you’ll lay down some cash for a ring. Hope means concrete action. Confident hope in a good future is essential to living the life God intended for you to live. And isn’t that what we want? To live your best life?

If we limit ourselves to our flimsy definition of hope, you’ll be left with hoping for the Cubs to win the World Series or hoping you’ll make it to the gas station even though you’ve been driving with the empty light on for far too long. Both would be pretty fantastic, but you better not bet on them. Far too many people find themselves living in insecurity because their hope is unsure. They’re left waiting on “what ifs.”