By Peter Hallett
Published January 18, 2000
My daughter asked me recently if I had made any New Year revolutions. I pointed out that I, like most people, have enough trouble with simple resolutions without attempting a revolution.
Yet the whole idea of New Year resolutions is indicative of the sense of hope many people feel when confronted with a new year. Ahead is an unmarked year and it is our hope that good things will fill it, helped along by our resolve to change.
For some, the hope they bear is the grim kind that says, "Nothing could be as bad as last year." For others it is more a weak wish that the comfort zone they are now enjoying will not be disturbed by any surprising matters of conscience, material need or relational upset.
For many, the new year brings just a fleeting emotional glimpse of something better in life, a glimpse rudely overriden by next morning’s hang over or the stultifying aloneness of another boring, empty day.
Hope is an elusive but essential ingredient for human existence. Paul, writing to a bunch of Christians in the ancient city of Corinth, included a chapter on the virtue of love and concluded his remarks: Faith, hope and love remain, and the greatest of these is love.
And while we would all happily agree that love is all important, hope stands tall in this virtuous trinity. If faith is our foundation and love our expression, perhaps hope is our motivation. Take it away, and the other two lose their life and spring.
I wonder how hopeful you are today? I seem to have been born optimistic and a relationship with God has further enhanced this characteristic. To this day I over state the positive possibilities in most situations only to find reality a little more realistic than I was prepared to admit. Still, hope seems to rebound in me, mostly, something for which I remain thankful (and hopeful of).
But I have met many people for whom hope is a burdensome task and they too quickly fit into the categories mentioned earlier ("It couldn’t get worse", "Weak wish", "Fleeting emotional glimpse").
There is no magic formula for hope, nor will it arrive in the mail, in your pay-packet or in a new television or 4WD.
In the Bible, hope is a lifestyle and attitude far beyond wishful thinking. It is a confident, positive expectation of the future based on a relationship with God rather than outward circumstances. Its bottom-line is "God loves me" rather than "what’s going to happen next?"
Along with getting to know our Maker and handing everything to Him in prayer, we can add hope to our lives by spending time with hopeful people and deliberately finding the good in every situation, just like the legendary Pollyanna.
We should take time to read and listen to material that encourages and challenges us - the New Testament being a good place to start.
Strive for greater balance in your life, with sufficient rest and avoid artificial stimulants that just set you on a cycle of ups and downs.
Giving to others, even in a small way, engenders hope in our own heart. Seeing that we can make even a small difference for someone else reminds us that improvement is not that distant for us.
Listen to and enjoy children, look at the stars and the mountains, have a good laugh and resist heaviness - don’t give it an inch!
As Paul Wilson writes in The Little Book of Hope, "Some people believe hope is nothing more than an expectation of certain outcomes. It is more than this. Hope is real commitment to positive behaviour and attitudes. In other words, hope is active, not passive. Make this commitment and life starts to look rosier."
WISDOM’S WAY: And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year. "Give me a light that I might tread safely into the unknown." And he replied, "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way." Minnie Haskins