Thots

"Though He slay me, yet I will hope in Him." Job 13:15

"Let human voices be silent; let human thoughts repose. To things incomprehensible they stretch out, not as if to comprehend them, but only to share in them. And share in them we shall." St. Augustine

"Courage faces fear and thereby masters it. Cowardice represses fear  and is thereby mastered by it." Martin Luther King Jr.

Hope: Challenging the Culture of Despair:

"Christian hope stands as a protest against the reality of human despair. It is the declaration of God that human life is created for and destined for a wholeness which rejoices in the experience of life in a community of love with God and with fellow human beings. Hope is the opposite of despair.

Christian hope also stands as a counter to pessimism, to that attitude which always expects the worst of oneself, of others, of circumstances. Christian hope lives out of the reality of a victory already won in the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth for all humanity, for all creation.

Christian hope stands also as a counter to optimism, where optimism is an expectation of a good outcome, and where this optimism is founded on the possibilities within humanity or the resources of the world. Christian hope is not romantic about human possibility and does not look to human resources for its basis. Rather, it arises from the God who loves, who is passionately committed to the wholeness of human life and the renewal of creation, who in Jesus Christ has made that reality both gift and promise. Christian hope lives out of this confession and not out of any chance improvement based on what may be resourced from the world or from human life.  In that sense Christian hope is also opposed to realism, if by realism we mean the possibilities which may be meaured from the realities of what we see around us. St. Paul the apostle, speaks of 'the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things which do not exist' who is the source of a 'hope against hope' (Romans 4:17, 18), that is a capacity to hope when such a capacity is contrary to every measurement of what is humanly sensible or wise.

The Christian is called to live for and among the sinful and the suffering and thus as one already dead, yet alive in the Spirit, free, loving and joyful, buoyed up and enlived by hope in the very midst of suffering and hopelesness. Such hope far surpasses ordinary optimism which asserts itself against a threatening future by an effort of positive thinking or emotional enthusiasm, however much wisely and cautiously temperered. Hope in the Spirit is a 'hope against hope,' a hope that lives beyond destruction in the power of  God. It i therefore hope in the future of the crucified God."  Randall Prior, Professor of Ministry Studies, Melbourne College of Divinity, in Hope: Challenging the Culture of Depair edited by Christiaan Mostert.