Perhaps there is no word in the English language as depressing as “hopeless”. It’s the word we attach to seriously lost causes, or the resigned and despairing verdict we pronounce when a desired dream is clearly not going to eventuate – “It’s hopeless.” We might add, “So let’s give up now. Carrying on only makes it worse.”
Yet hopeless is not really part of the Christian vocabulary. In Rom 15:13 Paul prays: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit“. Note Paul’s description of God. God is the “God of hope”. And if God is the God of hope, so long as God is, hope is, and if hope is, then hopeless it is not.
The Mariah Carey song asks:
Do you get what you’re hoping for?
When you look behind you, there’s no open door
What are you hoping for?
Do you know?
Her questions are haunting. I do a fair amount of coaching (incidentally I have a few spots available – if you are interested, reach out) and I sometimes use these questions. Often people aren’t able to answer them. They are working through their daily rhythm but are not sure where they hope it will lead. “What are you hoping for? Do you know?”
I’m also surprised at how often people answer in the negative: “Well I’m hoping it won’t all go wrong. I’m hoping I don’t make a complete ass of myself.” Fear sometimes stops us from listening to our deepest hopes and desires. By contrast, when we encounter “the God of hope” we have the courage to transcend our fears, for we are not alone. God is – and that changes everything.
Of course our hopes don’t have to be in the “I changed the world” category. At our wedding reception (almost 45 years ago) a friend sang the beautiful song, “Fill the World with Love“. Its questions remain with me…
In the evening of my life I shall look to the sunset,
At a moment in my life when the night is due.
And the question I shall ask only You can answer.
Was I brave and strong and true?
Did I fill the world with love my whole life through?
“Was I brave, and strong and true? Did I fill the world with love my whole life through?” That’s not in the “I’d like to be Einstein or failing that, Mother Theresa” category, but the hope to live a virtuous life is noble and good. It’s a worthy aspiration – in some ways more worthy because it is about growing inner qualities rather than focusing on achievements and successes. It’s more a question about who you hope to be than what you hope to do. And it is best when being precedes doing, for until we are some way along in our journey of formation, the choices we make are often shaped by shallow hopes and phantom desires.
Psalm 20:4 is striking, “May God give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed.” The prayer is daring on many levels. It portrays God as a generous granter of our hopes and desires. It also assumes we will have the common sense and confidence to plan for what we really want. As I wrote in a blog last year:
“The link between the desire of our heart (or our deepest desires) and our plans, is perfectly logical and makes sense. After all, what’s the point of desiring something deeply but having no plan in place for how to attain it? If we really want something but do nothing to attain it, that springs from either great foolishness or real despair – being too foolish to make a plan to get what you really, really want, or being too despairing to think that there is even a vague possibility that it can be attained – which then makes planning unnecessary.”
We’ve been looking at a theology of personal development. If theology is (as the literal interpretation of the word implies) “thinking about/ the study of God” then a theology of personal development is thinking about how we should grow and develop in the light of our knowledge of God. May the “God of hope” give you the desires of your heart. May you fill the world with love. Or to use another hope filled prayer based on one by William Sloane Coffin:
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
May God give you grace never to sell yourself short,
Grace to risk something big for something good,
Grace to remember that the world is too small for anything but truth and too dangerous for anything but love.
So may God take your minds and think through them.
May God take your lips and speak through them.
May God take your hearts and set them on fire. Amen.
Now those are wonderful things to hope for… to plan for…
Nice chatting…
Photo by Lukas: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-hand-reaching-body-of-water-296282/
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