Got Hope?

We all know that the virtues of faith and love are important to Christians, but the virtue of hope is huge for us too! In his famous and powerful letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul wrote:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

Now, for sure, Paul wanted his readers’ hearts to be filled with faith and love—the rest of the letter makes that clear. But this passage near the epistle’s end also makes clear that Paul wanted their hearts to be filled with . . . hope.

This makes sense. Psychologists and theologians tell us that it’s very, very important for our hearts to be filled with hope. English politician and writer, Joseph Addison, once observed:

The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

The assertion has also been made that …

“Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope”

Mark it down, folks:

The human heart runs on the fuel provided by the experience of hope!

The “God is Dead” philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche famously argued that … “[i]n reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man’s torments.” Then again, Nietzsche went on to die in an asylum for the insane. While no one can prove that Nietzsche’s lack of hope made him go mad, one wonders.

All this to say that it’s no wonder that the Apostle Paul was so very eager for the readers of his letter to the Romans to be filled to overflowing with the hope given by God’s Holy Spirit—a hope grounded in the reality of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.