May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

According to Dante’s Inferno, at the vestibule to Hell there is a sign that reads: “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.”  I was pretty sure I saw the same words printed below “Welcome to New York” when I was driving the moving van carrying our worldly goods from South Carolina to the frozen tundra of WNY.

The loss of hope is no trivial thing.  Our dreams and plans for the future are often the sustaining force that gives us strength to meet the demands of the day and to sustain ourselves through times of hardship.  Hoped-for outcomes impel us to keep our promises to ourselves and to keep on doing the hard things we must do today if we expect to enjoy the goals we hope for tomorrow – even when the ‘tomorrow’ is years away.  The loss of hope underlies the bleak question Bruce Springsteen asks: “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse?”

We can lose hope when our career plans are thwarted.  We lose hope when illness or the premature death of a spouse upends dreams of retirement adventures and growing old together.  We lose hope when marriages fail and suddenly not only our future is disrupted, but we are left questioning even if we can trust our memories of the past.  We lose hope when children drift away and dreams of idyllic family life prove as elusive as chasing rainbows.  You know the particular assaults on hope that you have faced or maybe are facing today.

Hope for a particular vision of the future based on a job or a marriage or a certain way of life is not exactly a false hope, but it is not the basis of Christian hope either.  Christian hope transcends the genuinely crushing disappointments that come from broken dreams and broken hearts.  Christian hope is not optimism or positive thinking.  For sure it is not a willful denial of the pain that comes when our lives fail to turn out the way we hope.

Our hope as followers of Christ is based on the unchanging gracious presence of God that even tragedy, broken hearts, and failed aspirations cannot dispel.  Our hope is that God will walk with us through the valley of broken dreams.  Our hope is that at the end of all our travelling and travails, all our fears and grief and even our greatest joys will dissolve into the eternal Being of God.

Prayer: Eternal God, when all human reasons for hope are lost and our hearts are broken, lift our sights to the imperishable hope of your eternal love.  Amen.