What exactly is hope? How does it differ from faith? To keep it simple faith is to believe or trust something or somebody, while hope is to wish or desire something. So faith and hope are very related but a bit different. Let us use an example. Imagine a young man proposes to marry a lady, assuming she agrees. So she has hope or a wish to marry him. Imagine, for tribal reasons the man’s family are not in support of the marriage, however the man is consistent, loving, caring and honest, because of his behavior she believes he will keep his word and marry her. That is faith. The Bible summarizes it in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Our emphasis today is on hope, our desires and wishes. You hear people say a situation is hopeless, maybe when diagnosed with a sickness like cancer, HIV, or heart diseases or maybe when they have lost all their investment to a business due to fraud or corona virus affecting the world economy. Or perhaps when they lose a loved one like a parent, spouse or child. Lets see what the wisest man that ever lived, King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 9:4, “Anyone who is among the living has hope – even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!” This is very simple ,once you have life then you have hope. Nobody who has life is in a hopeless situation . I had an interview with a friend named Sister Carol who got blind or better put visually impaired from Glaucoma. She said that there is an ability in disability, she washes, cooks and goes to work. She is independent and says she can do all things through Christ who strengthens her (Philippians 4:13). Just close your eyes for like 5 seconds, image if you can never open them again. God forbid. But this is the reality, she did not lose hope.
No matter your difficulties, challenge God’s word concerning you ,one of them is that you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. do not give up. Many people fail or die not because of the problems they face but because they lose hope. Genesis 8:22 says, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” So you may in the winter or night of your life, do not lose hope. Summer and day will surely come, hold on to God, have a blessed day.
