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what is hope?
to some hope may be unrealistic and silly to believe in as no one knows if that thing you are hoping for, will actually materialize.
to some hope may not be worth believing in because of past crushing realities.
to others, hope may be the thing that keeps them believing, keeps them living, keeps them loving.
To me, hope is complicated. Hoping for something means you are making a gamble. This thing you are hoping for may not work out or may work out in the best of ways. So parts of me want to dive into hoping for something, to have no reservations because maybe if I hope hard enough, it will happen. Or maybe, the situation is just all around bad news, so hoping makes it feel like it’s not all meant to be bad and something good can come out of it. There’s a term in psychology called “cognitive dissonance” and basically what it means is that humans generally like to feel good (as in happy or not sad/angry/frustrated) so in order to rid our minds of negative thoughts/emotions, we either do something good (beneficial, etc) or go into denial.
This is maybe why hope is so hard to believe in.
Maybe deep down we know that to believe in something so huge and miraculous is just ridiculous and a waste of time and energy but it just is easier to put on a mask, making others (or even just ourselves) believe that we believe in hope.
But I think the opposite is true. It’s easy to “fake out” others, we’re really good at it actually. So why go through the trouble and pain of admitting something to be useless to believe in and be disappointed?
Hope is a reminder.
Hope is a reminder to Christians that we don’t have to worry. We can place our hope and trust that the Lord knows what he’s doing, he “knows the plans that he has for us, plans to prosper us and not to harm us.” This is something to rejoice in!
Hope may still disappoint you, not everything we want to happen, will happen. But I believe that the risk is worth it, hoping for something does not put you in denial, it puts you in perspective.
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