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April 09, 2004On HopeToday is Good Friday as observed by my faith. It is also the fourth day of the Jewish holiday of Passover. As most careful observers will note, many of the traditions of Christianity can be closely traced back to its Jewish heritage. The Last Supper of Christ was a Passover meal shared with his fellow Jewish disciples and observed in accordance with Jewish law and tradition. One of the many arguments I have heard over the years about the reason for Christ’s coming was due to the drift of Jewish society around the first century to observation of the faith out of custom and not devotion. Sadly, I commonly see the same dynamic in many of the Christian churches in our time. In that spirit, I sat down to meditate on what both Easter and Passover meant in the most general of terms to both Christians and Jews and I realized the observances both are founded in hope. Jews in the hope of the Promised Land and their freedom from bondage by the Pharaoh, and Christians from the freedom of the bondage of sin and death. We celebrate hope just as the earth gives us signs of hope that the cruel and cold winter has passed us for another year. It is in this spirit that I give you a few thoughts on hope that perhaps Christians, Jews, and any person can share, and perhaps, celebrate on this day. Hope is such a precious commodity. It is the thing that enables, no, empowers a person, a couple, a family, a group, even nations, to hold on for a brighter day, for a better reward, for more smiles, and fewer tears of sorrow. Hope fuels our empty energies and allows us to go farther than we have ever dreamed we were able. When days are dark, and nights are haunting, hope can be the one glimmer of light, the one thread left holding a person to sanity that allows him to keep his wits and saves his heart from becoming scabbed and scarred beyond recognition or repair. Hope is being able to look up at the black night and not fear it’s abyss, but see the moon or the planets shine. It’s the knowledge that they shine because of the same warm sun that will return to us as soon as our night has passed. It is understanding that on the other side of the globe there is day, and it will be ours again soon. Hopelessness is the same man seeing the same sun of the day and only fearing the night to come. Hope embraces the night for signs of the day to come and the moment when the first rays of dawn peek shyly over the horizon; a gentle prelude to the glory and bold blaze that will soon mean the day has arrived in its full splendor and with all the new chances and opportunity it brings. Some say hope is a dangerous thing. They claim it can make a man mad, inciting him to feed fantasies, and foster notions that cannot be. For if a man is irretrievably in a den of hopelessness, the very faintest shimmer of hope can make him insane holding onto those dreams. I say they are wrong. When there is nothing to readily hope for, the mere exercise of being able to hope, if for nothing else but to hope for a day filled with more, tangible hopes, is the only thing that keeps a man sane. If there is nothing left to hope for, there is nothing left to live for. I’d say that’s what a lot of people would call hell; a place where the capacity to hope has deserted him, and his will to live has followed quickly in its dark trudge away from others. I will grant that hope can be frustrating. When one glimpses the reward that is to be, it is difficult to await in patience. Perhaps this is where the doubtful claim that hope can be a dangerous maddening thing. Such that, in that first glimpse, a hunger and a drive to attain that reward becomes all consuming and burns a man from within until he has incinerated the very thing he had hoped for. Yet, it is not hope that causes this injury, but the inability to conquer haste. When haste can rule your life, you may very well burn your hopes in a fiery ring. Hope must be accompanied by faith. The faith that the very object of your hope will come at the right time and at the right place with your apt actions. In a very real way, faith must often precede hope if it has any prayer of being realized. I believe in hope. I believe in the exercise of hoping. I cherish the clear moments when I remember that so much of life is about being able to hope for something better, to dream of a greater day, of a peaceful night, and being able to look forward to a life of impending sunrises; beginnings and not endings. Hope lifts us above our present difficulty and allows us to look to the happiness that lies only just ahead, so long as we keep putting one foot in front of the other and still look to and pursue that brilliant flame leading us to our future place of reward and peace. Posted by Adam H at April 9, 2004 04:44 AM ~ Link Cosmos | Trackbacks (6)Winds of Change.NET linked with Passover 5: Good Friday, Passover & Hope Winds of Change.NET linked with Passover 5: Good Friday, Passover & Hope Dean's World linked with Good Friday BLACKFIVE linked with Some Required Resources and Reading? Jan's Liahona linked with Hopeful Easter Essay Res Ipsa Loquitur linked with A Beautiful Thing Comments
But a positive lack of hope - not hoping for, can be healthy and healing. Acceptance of what is as opposed to what might be can lead to tranquility. may God bless you, Sir. There aren't many men who dare say "I'm Christian and Proud of it". Posted by: Ricky Vandal at April 11, 2004 12:08 PMHope springs eternal... I'm grateful for hope. Nice essay. Posted by: Renee at April 11, 2004 08:46 PMPost a comment
 
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