Hope
Perhaps we are all enamored with the three heavenly, virtues: faith, hope, and charity. Once read, who can forget Paul’s words, “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”
What sets charity apart? I suppose because it embodies the virtues of Christ. In Paul’s words,
4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
Charity embodies the pure love of Christ, a higher love cannot exist. It is also Paul to whom we look for a definition of faith.
1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)
In the economy of Paul’s language, we learn the key attributes of faith. “Substance of things hoped for” refers to that which is tangible, that which we can see, hear, touch, taste, smell, or feel with our senses. It brings it from the abstract to the concrete. Without faith hope remains intangible and unreachable. It is mere wishfull thinking. Faith clarifies hope and brings it from want to expectation. Because of faith rather than wish for salvation we can hope for salvation, meaning faith puts it in our grasp. Faith, of course, must be centered in the atonement of Jesus Christ.
But Paul isn’t finished. He presents another clarifying definition of faith. It is “the evidence of things not seen.” Paul puts faith on a scientific basis. To the faithful it provides evidence or proof of the hand of God in our lives.
Let’s say we hope for a miracle. Faith is the link between the desire and the fulfillment. We know from experience that most miracles can be explained away through scientific reasoning. What can’t always be explained away is the coincidence. God often answers our prayers through divinely inspired coincidence and only those who have faith can recognize the hand of God in the miracle. God’s hand is invisible to all those who rely on chance, accident, coincidence, serendipity of circumstances and scientific explanations.
Hope, which is the second of the heavenly virtues is for me, one of the most beautiful words in the English language, more for its connotation than its denotation, more for its spirit that for its sound.
I love the couplet of Alexander Pope in his Essay on Man.
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest.
The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”
Notice some of the scriptural references to hope.
Psalm 38:15 “For in thee, O Lord, do I hope: thou wilt hear, O Lord my God.”
Romans 4:18 “Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.”
