Hope is often viewed as a destination—like saying we have hope for the future, but we get the hope once we arrive at the future we are expecting or creating in our minds. We believe that our lives should “normalize” or the tough stuff should stop happening at some point, and that’s the point where hope is manifested.

I was reading Katherine Wolf’s Treasures in the Dark recently, and she addresses this after she has suffered an almost-life-ending stroke, multiple neural events, broken bones and recovery from all of those things. She says:

Whether I acknowledged it or not, hope had been a destination to me. Something to be attained or achieved. I thought I could successfully complete a one-time progressive ascent from hurting to healing to hoping, then hang out at the top for the rest of my life. Easy breezy! Maybe this sounds like something you’ve believed too. 

It turns out what I thought was a one-way ascent is actually a cycle, an endless tumbling of hurting into healing into hoping into hurting—and one and on it goes. I’d been mistaken for a long time. Hope is not a fixed point we can reach. Hope is the living force that propels us through the rest of the blasted, blessed, process of hurting and healing. And as the cycle progresses, so does hope. It evolves and expands and deepens. Over a lifetime, I think our hope will take as many forms as our hurts do. At the end of all the tumbling, I think hope will carry us to the place where we won’t need it anymore. (pg 184)

I realize that most of us are waiting for us to reach the top, for the cycle of suffering to stop because we think that’s a destination we will find in this life. But I don’t think that’s actually true. I think that the purpose of this life is that we grow deeper in relationship with Jesus, not that we avoid suffering, heartache or anything difficult. God always puts the priority on our relationship with Him over our comfort, because He knows that the comfort is only temporary and not worth sacrificing the depth of relationship.

I like to think of hope instead of a destination more like a force (as Katherine says above) to get us through the circumstances, no matter how bleak they are. Hope is the evidence of God’s power within us that allows us to see past the present trouble to the glorious unveiling of Jesus and the increasing sweetness of our relationship with Him. This means that we are not waiting for the situation to change to have hope, but can have hope anytime, anywhere, no matter what.

That may seem like denial if you are still looking at hope as the destination of things getting better.  But I think this is actually more encouraging! We don’t have to wait for the situation to change, or for the suffering to end to have hope! We can have it right now. All we need to do to have this hope is to look to God, the fountain of hope, to fill us to overflowing and to surround us with His abundance through His Holy Spirit so hope radiates out of us!

No matter what your circumstance, or how often you see the cycle of suffering repeating in your life, you still can have hope, for it’s contained in the Life of Jesus within—you already have it! All you have to do is look to Him in order to see past whatever seems dominating and agonizing in your life, recognizing that He carries you through and provides insatiable hope all the way.

Now may God, the fountain of hope, fill you to overflowing with uncontainable joy and perfect peace as you trust in him. And may the power of the Holy Spirit continually surround your life with his super-abundance until you radiate with hope! Romans 15:13