I remember some years ago when my sixteen year-old neighbor spent a summer trying to learn how to ride a skateboard. He persisted through embarrassing falls and hostile temperature. And why? I fancy it was because it seem a cool thing to do (and perhaps the girls would love him for it). By the same token, why do musicians spend endless hours playing scales, or athletes sweat it out in gymnasiums, or seminary students stay up half the night studying? Each one hopes to succeed one day.

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” So wrote the eighteenth century poet, Alexander Pope. Platitude? Yes, but true for all that. I have to confess the lines (from An Essay on Man) come to mind frequently at dinner when my dog lies at my feet, his gaze fixed on every morsel entering my mouth. Try telling him that this is but a platitude!

These words are at the heart of human experience. They form the nerve center of the book of Ecclesiastes. Take a look at Ecc. 9:4 and you’ll get the point: “But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.”

I remember some years ago when my sixteen year-old neighbor spent a summer trying to learn how to ride a skateboard. He persisted through embarrassing falls and hostile temperature. And why? I fancy it was because it seem a cool thing to do (and perhaps the girls would love him for it). By the same token, why do musicians spend endless hours playing scales, or athletes sweat it out in gymnasiums, or seminary students stay up half the night studying? Each one hopes to succeed one day. They want to be someone or do something, and this hard work is the way to achieve it. In a word, they have hope!

The bitter experience of hopelessness is a killer. Talk to medical therapists about the importance of sustaining hope in the fight against disease and again you’ll get the point. Tell someone they have a terminal illness, and hope temporarily evaporates. It is crucial to urge the promotion of hope at such times. It is time to gird up the loins and do battle against a viscous monster. Whatever must be faced, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy… these must be buoyed by the hope that these treatments will do some good.

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