Having Hope in apparent hopelessness
Hope is one of the top three biblical virtues, the others being faith and love. It is hope that gives meaning to life in an apparently meaningless world. It is hope that makes us wake up each morning to see if the new day is going to be better than the one that ended. It is hope that keeps us excited about the future.
However, in challenging situations and difficult times, hope is hard to come by. In this age of climate anxiety, frightening pandemic, rigid tribalism, rabid partisanship and hatred for fellow humans, hope is hard. Passages from scriptures, quotes from sages, and messages from spiritual leaders may sound hollow and meaningless.
One day, I was counseling a woman who had suddenly lost her job. She was a single parent with two children. Her daughter was a freshman in college and her son was in high school. She had no family in this country. She had a job making decent money, and suddenly one day, she was let go. More than the loss of income, it was also loss of self-esteem, loss of purpose, and loss of dignity. She began visualizing being evicted from her apartment, utilities being shut off, her car being repossessed and having no money to put food on the table for her children. She felt totally hopeless and was in a panic mode. It is very hard to be with a person who is losing hope.
I told her about God taking care of the birds of the air and lilies of the field, and how much more valuable a human being like herself was. I tried to assuage her anxieties with religious cliches and pious platitudes, but she was not convinced.
She countered me by saying that birds don’t have mortgages and lilies of the field don’t have car payments!
How do we speak about hope in such seemingly hopeless situations?
How do we speak about hope to the families who have lost their loved ones in a tragedy like a terrorist attack?
How does hope work for a teenager who lost his mother to cancer?
What is the meaning of hope for a family whose house was blown to pieces in a hurricane?
What is hope for parents of a child who was kidnapped and killed?
What is the hope of millions of displaced humans waiting in refugee camps in foreign lands?
There are a million human scenarios of pain and suffering in which hopelessness fits more than hope. It could be loss of job, loss of life of a loved one, getting a terminal diagnosis, getting into a serious accident, termination of a relationship, end of a marriage, end of a dream.
There are scary scenarios and hopeless situations all around us.
What happens when we lose hope as individuals and as a nation? Hopelessness leads to despair, which leads to desolation, which leads to destruction, which leads to death. Without hope, life is scary and meaningless. Without hope, life will spiral into a hell hole of anger, anxiety, and frustration.
During my ministry years, I found it so hard to preach sermons about hope because early on, I realized that platitudes from the pulpit did not make any palpable difference in the lives of the people in the pews.
Besides, hope is ultimately about the unknown, and we humans who seek certainty and control, don’t do well with t
How do you survive apparently hopeless situations? How do you keep hope alive and cope? One thing I am convinced about is that a loving God who created us in His image, would not want us to suffer and live unhappy, miserable lives.
If no sane human parent would wish that fate for his child, why do you think God would want that for us?
So, the first thing to understand is that the fear and misery that we experience is not God-induced, or part of a perverse divine plan, but most of it is, human creation.
And why do we create misery for ourselves and become anxious and fearful? I say, largely because of our ignorance.
God or the Universe has placed within us an inner system which we are supposed to use to navigate the treacherous landscape of life. In automobiles it is called the engine. In computers, it is called the operating system. In cellphones it is called the sim card. If the engine does not work, the car is useless. If the operating system is not operating, the computer is worthless. If the sim card is absent or damaged, the phone is unusable.
Similarly, if our inner system is not working, we are going to live unhappy, unfulfilled, sad, angry, and fearful lives. Unfortunately, that is the case with most people, because of the ignorance of the existence of this inner operating system. Or they don’t trust the system and use it. They don’t know how to rely on it or live by harnessing its power. They look for answers, relief, and remedies outside, which they are not going to find. And so, life becomes a struggle in this vale of tears.
The inner system or the operating system of your life is also known as your soul or the divine image within you. That is why Jesus said, the Kingdom of God is within you. Once you start operating your life using the power of that inner system, you will experience your current life differently, despite its challenges. Or as Eckhart Tolle says: “Your life situation may not change, but your life will change.”
