I’ve misunderstood HOPE for too long. I’m taking it back in 2025 to a greater fullness of meaning. Here’s what I know so far:

Hope carries longing and that longing can feel risky if you’ve had too many early or ongoing experiences of disappointments. It feels like fire to my soul to be disappointed in something I’ve desired to happen and it doesn’t. It matters little whether the unfulfillment was out of my control or due to something I lacked in achieving it. The pain is pointed and fierce and heavy all at the same time.

I thought hope was passive but there’s a gutsy-ness to it, an open resistance to it that is really appealing to me. “It looks bleak, you say? I don’t care, I’ll still move forward toward my target, intent, objective.”

Hope is “not yet”. Hope still contains pain, which is a hard truth that none of us want to run to embrace. But I believe that the searing pang of the ‘not yet’ can be/will be a portal to the presence of God. This is what I HOPE to test this year, as I lean in to hope amid the sorrows and hardships of life.

For me, some things that have nurtured hope in my own life are: meditating on Scripture; cultivating awe and wonder in God’s creation; sharing deep things with another where we ‘get’ each other; a baby’s coos; a toddler’s giggles; a small act of kindness done to me, or that I do for another; a small act of kindness that I witness someone do for someone else.

What have you found that nurtures hope in your own life?

My greatest hope can be summed up by

Micah 7:7 - But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.

This is my ultimate hope because having God hear me (listen and act on my behalf) will get me through the waiting for all the other things I hope for. Having God with me in my hope is the only way to sustain me in this hard world.