Parson to Person

The Easter season is nearly upon us, and soon Christian folks everywhere will be celebrating new life and resurrected hope. I want to take a few minutes here to talk about HOPE, a somewhat neglected aspect of religious teaching.

It was way back in 1965 when Dionne Warwick sang out what surely could have been a strong religious opinion: What the World Needs Now, Is Love, Sweet Love. It was around that same time when every church in the land was awash in peace awareness, peace promotion, peace building, tied of course to the escalating conflict in Vietnam. Obviously, I am in favor of both love and peace, essential aspects of our human lives; but I think there is another even more desirable reality that we need to cultivate. Here’s what I think… that the most significant factor regarding our quality of life this side of heaven is HOPE.

I love being loved and loving others; I cherish sweet peaceful times too, but neither of these are of much use if hopelessness has seized our hearts and minds. Hope allows the enjoyment of all the other virtues, and the absence of it makes everything else skittish and tentative.

And here is the good news; hope is a renewable resource, a cultivated human reality, and also, I suspect, a gift of the Spirit’s grace. I love anagrams, so here is how I remember hope: Having Open, Positive Expectations. Let me elaborate a bit on how I think we can grow and enjoy this aspect of our lives.

First off, hope is something you HAVE, something you need to possess and claim. It requires an act of acquisitive will; it doesn’t just magically happen! Once you have it, and have claimed it as your chosen pattern, it is easier to hold on to it and perpetuate it. The Spirit’s loving involvement notwithstanding, hope is something we must choose.

Secondly, what we need, in our hopefulness, is an OPEN attitude. This is no time to be shutting doors, worrying ourselves into inactivity and stagnation. Here is where many of us cannot take the leap of faith; if we cannot see, or calculate, how a thing can work out, we usually don’t take any chances. But those of us who get all closed in this way are the ones who end up most often feeling – you guessed it – hopeless. And hopelessness is a dark and deep pit that can be really hard to climb out of.

Thirdly, we cultivate this awareness and attitude that is open, but also POSITIVE. To qualify as hope, our aspirations must be towards the good. It sounds so obvious, but I meet folks every day, sometimes in the mirror in the morning too, who are wide open to all sorts of negativity, who live in dread and sure expectation that the worst is just around the corner. That we often feel despondent and hopeless is not really much of a mystery, is it? Obviously there are many life situations that we do not personally control, but the thing that is always in our control is our response to those situations, and the hope-filled person is devoted to choosing a positive response.

Finally, and most importantly, to have hope we seek to have open, positive EXPECTATIONS. This is a truth shared across all the faiths of the world. Jesus said that we will always reap as we have sown; the sowing is the physical side of expectation, desired outcome. We don’t just toss seeds into the ground and walk away; we wanna see those flowers or veggies pop up and flourish! Contemporary spiritual people say outright that expectation determines outcome, which is a big thought but one that proves itself again and again. The legendary Henry Ford said it plainly: whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you are right. What we expect, and the way we expect it, creates our world.

I wish for you all peace and love, of course. But my more fervent wish is that you will choose hope, that your life will be vastly improved by Having Open, Positive Expectations. Happy Easter!