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For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future and a hope. The Lord appeared to us in the past saying: 'I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness. I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt...'

From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God beside you, who works for those who wait for him. Turn away from mortals, who have only breath in their nostrils, for of what account are they? For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.

Therefore, I will now allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. From there I will give her her vineyards, and make the Valley of Abhor a door of hope. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who hope in me will not be disappointed.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul. And now faith, hope, and love abide.

Jeremiah 29:11 (NRSV); Jeremiah 31:3,4a (NIV); Isaiah 64:4; 2:22; 30:15a (NRSV); Hosea 2:14,15 (NIV); Isaiah 49:23c (NIV); 1 Peter 1:3-5 (NRSV); Hebrews 6:19a (NRSV); 1 Corinthians 13:13a (NRSV). ......

Without hope life is difficult, if not impossible. An experiment was done in the University of North Carolina with two rats. They were each placed in a container half full of water. The first container was sealed, and the creature instinctively realising that there was no hope, gave up swimming and drowned in three minutes. The second container was not sealed, and there remained a possibility of escape and survival. That rat swam for 36 hours straight before dying of exhaustion.

Prisoners of war have had much the same experience. Those who maintained hope that one day they would be released and that there were people at home who loved and cared for them, were able to survive, whereas those without hope died in the atrocious conditions.

People often say of one who is critically ill, 'where there's life, there's hope'. But the reverse is probably more true: 'where there's hope, there's life'.

There is nothing more debilitating than hopelessness. When people are given a vision - a hope for what might be - they have found their lives transformed. A Christian principal of a school was contemplating how to respond to a lad who was always causing trouble in the classroom. The boy's background was difficult, and he had no motivation to study. Once more the boy was called to the principal's office. When he came in, the principal took his hands in his, looked at them, and said 'you have good, thin hands - the hands of a surgeon'. Nothing more was said. The boy was dismissed. But his behaviour began to change, and he did indeed become a skilled surgeon. He was given a vision of hope for what could be.

Jeremiah had a message of hope for the Hebrews in exile. Other prophets were bringing false hope of a quick return to their homeland; Jeremiah's message was for them to establish their home in this foreign, despicable place. For even here, God knew the plans he had for his people - plans which involved a future and a hope.

Yet the fullness of the Christian hope is not evident until the New Testament. For the richness of our hope is in and through Jesus Christ. Recently I was in the Blue Mountains (near Sydney) in early spring. I've never before experienced the profusion of colour with the new growth on the trees and the mosaic of spring blossom. The place was alive with hope, with vibrancy, with new life.

Through the resurrection of Jesus, our hope is vibrant with life. No longer can 'hope' ever be a vague, ambiguous word. Now 'hope' is sure and firm - an anchor for the soul. 'Faith, hope and love abide' (1 Corinthians 13:13a), and while the greatest of these is love, hope is also Christ's gift: now, in even the most trying and difficult circumstances of life; then the sure hope of life beyond the grave. Hallelujah!

You see, this Christian hope is not a psychological, subjective state that afflicts Christian people. Quite the contrary. Christian hope is rooted in the certainty of objective facts. They are the facts of revelation concerning Jesus Christ. The Bible proclaims that Jesus Christ has accomplished a work of victory so significant that it has changed the course of human history.

Joel Nederhood, 'Happiness Without Hope'

So right at the beginning of this study of Christian hope, I wish to dissociate it firmly from that distorted form of Christian hope which loses sight of this world and our life in the world in order, ostrich-like, to become immersed in a beyond. Christian hope is a total hope, and it touches on all aspects of human life, both individual and social. As a total hope, it is not limited or nullified by death. Indeed, I would have no hesitation in calling it a 'supernatural' hope, in the sense that it looks for possibilities beyond those which we know in our everyday 'natural' existence. But a truly total hope is a hope so large and many-sided that we impoverish and misrepresent it if we lay all the stress on its supernatural and other-worldly aspects.

John Macquarie, 'Christian Hope'

Christian hope rests on God, not on a person or luck or fate. And it is a dynamic, transforming quality, reaching forward from the present with its fears and frustrations to a future bright with the promises of a faithful God. Without this hope, life is reduced to a purposeless struggle. Hope reaches forward and claims the on-going purpose of God.

From a sermon preached by John Gladstone.

As long as people accept the challenge and responsibility of life, they have hope. Their work, their study, their family are all lived in hope, and they constantly commit themselves to the future and look for a fulfilment in the future. Hope must have very deep roots in our humanity, for over and over again we find to our surprise that people whom we expected to be overwhelmed by disasters and disappointments and made a prey to despair, are in fact still projecting their lives into the future and still striving forward in quiet hope. So it has been from the beginning, for although the shadow of evil and death has fallen over every life, it has been met by hope and belief in a promise of better things... For the roots of hope, we have to look beyond the natural order, and we find them ultimately only in God.

John Macquarie, 'The Humility of God'

Hope... means... a continual looking forward to the eternal world... it does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next... It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither.

C.S. Lewis, 'The Quotable Lewis'

What oxygen is for the lungs, such is hope for the meaning of life.

Emil Brunner, '3000 Quotations on Christian Themes'

Suffering taught him patience, patience taught him experience, experience taught him hope.

Soren Kierkegaard, 'Purity of the Heart is to Will One Thing'

I had asked God to tell my Why? He gave me no answer to this question. Instead he gave me ... infinite Love for my present need, ... step-by-step guidance for my future walk. How much anguish I might have saved myself years later if I had remembered this! If I'd thought back to the time of this first great bereavement, when instead of explanations, he gave me himself.

Catherine Marshall, 'Light In My Darkest Night'

A genuine hope is always vulnerable, and if the vulnerability is taken away, hope has degenerated into optimism.

John Macquarie, 'Christian Hope'

Hope, of course, contains no guarantee. it does not make things easy, but gives strength to undertake the difficult. It is very important indeed to notice that there is a great difference between hope and optimism. Hope is humble, trustful, vulnerable. Optimism is arrogant, brash, complacent. Hope has drawn the pang of suffering and has perhaps even felt the chill of despair. The word hope should not be likely spoken by people who have never had any cause for despair. Only one sho has cried 'de profundis' can really appreciate the meaning of hope.

John Macquarie, 'The Humility of God'

Put your ear to the ground and identify the noises around you. Predominant are anxious, restless footsteps, frightened footsteps in the dark, footsteps bitter and rebellious. No sound as yet of hope's first footsteps. Glue your ear to the ground again. Hold your breath. Put out your advance antennae: The Master is on his way. Most likely he will not get here when things are going well, but in bad times when the going's unsure and painful.

Dom Helder Camara, 'A Thousand Reasons for Living'

Bibliography

Emil Brunner, '3000 Quotations on Christian Themes', Baker Book House, 1975, p.180.

Dom Helder Camara, 'A Thousand Reasons for Living', Darton, Longman and Todd, 1981, p.80.

D. Eastman and J. Hayford, 'Living and Praying in Jesus' Name', Tyndale, 1988, pp.126,127.

John Gladstone, 'The Dimensions of Christian Living', Sermon preached on 18.11.79.

Soren Kierkegaard, 'Purity of the Heart Is To Will One Thing', Harper & Row, 1956, p.209.

C.S. Lewis, 'The Quotable Lewis', Tyndale House, 1989, pp.305,306.

John Macquarie, 'The Humility of God', SCM, 1978, pp.10,11 and 13.

John Macquarie, 'Christian Hope', Mowbray, 1978, pp.1,2 and 110.

Catherine Marshall, 'Light In My Darkest Night', A Chosen Book, 1989, p.20.

Joel Nederhood, 'Happiness Without Hope', Sermon on The Back to God Hour.