Calling Hope a Good Friend

“True hope dwells on the possible, even when life seems to be a plot written by someone who wants to see how much adversity we can overcome. True hope responds to the real world, to real life; it is an active effort.”

— Walter Anderson

There is this sense that true hope, in the above context, is a panacea for life. For many, however, hope is but a pipedream. So many live without hope. It seems so far beyond them. But hope is reachable especially when we consider how we access it.

Where hope dwells is in reality. Now, this can be a scary prospect.

One of the mountains we must climb in life is the mountain of reality; it is a bigger mountain for those who have dealt with horrendous realities. Those, otherwise, who have had blessed realities find reality a bit of a doddle. They do not wrangle for their hope like those who have endured horrendous realities.

So this is an article purposed in finding the location of hope for the person who has dealt with horrendous realities—the person estranged to the location of hope, because, by its very nature, hope has appeared threatening.

The Coherence of Hope and Reality

When we discover that hope and reality cohere with each other it is a light-bulb moment.

Then, depending on our perception of reality—whether it’s a scary thought or not—we grapple with the truth, knowing that the truth cannot harm us when we invoke courage.

When we can deal with reality we can approach hope. When reality no longer scares us, because it shouldn’t (in an ideal world), we have immediate access to the hope we need—to the thing that fuels our faith. We need to make our realities safe enough that we can deal with them.

When we are hope-filled we grasp our realities without fear, even if they would normally be attributed as fearful.

Reality is a beautiful concept, again, if we don’t have to deal with the scariness of it.

So when reality is coped with—when we don’t try to run away from life—and that takes courage, resolve, tenacity, and strength of resilience—we have hope. We have access to a thing we cannot truly define. But defining it doesn’t matter when we have it.

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Hope coheres with reality. If we can cope with our reality we have access to hope. Coping with reality is made easier when we understand God simply wants us to have the best of life. When we understand God’s reality hope really is only an arm’s length away. God offers us hope today; a hope made real in Jesus Christ.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.