I originally published this post in August of 2019, but given everything that 2020 has thrown at us so far, I found it coming back to my mind. My deep wish is that it helps you find hope in these troubled times.
One of my favorite movies is The Shawshank Redemption. I love the last scene where Morgan Freeman’s character Red, newly released from decades in prison, is on a bus to where Tim Robbin’s character Andy is restoring a boat on a beach in Mexico. In his buttery voice, Morgan reflects on hope:
“I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.”
What is it about hope that has such a profound impact on us? There are a lot of emotional experiences we desire like love, joy, and peace. What makes hope so important?
Hope is a big topic so I’ll only attempt to describe one aspect of it. This post was inspired by author John Eldredge in one of his recent “Wild at Heart” daily emails. You can read that post here.
What I found intriguing was Eldredge’s idea that we all have three kinds of hopes:
1. CASUAL HOPES – these are our day to day, common hopes. I hope my favorite team makes the playoffs. I hope this restaurant has cheesecake. I hope I can see my friends Friday night. These hopes we readily acknowledge to ourselves and others.
2. PRECIOUS HOPES – these are more serious. The fulfillment, or lack of fulfillment, of these hopes have a dramatic impact on our lives and the lives of people we love. I hope I survive the layoffs at work. I hope my child starts making better choices. I hope it’s not cancer. These kinds of hopes we usually acknowledge to ourselves and the people close to us.
3. ULTIMATE HOPES – these hopes go to the deepest level of our thoughts about life and ourselves. I hope I really matter. I hope my life has lasting meaning. I hope there’s something good waiting for me when I die. These kinds of hopes most of us rarely acknowledge even to ourselves let alone share with other people.
Here’s why understanding these three types of hope is important to our personal growth:
“When our hopes are in their proper places, attached to the right things, not only do we flourish better as human beings, but we are rescued from a thousand heartbreaks.” John Eldredge
What’s he saying here? Two critical things:
1. We need to keep our hopes in their PROPER PLACE – all of those hopes listed above are normal and healthy. But if we allow a casual hope, like our favorite team making the playoffs, to become a precious hope, we’re headed for trouble. If your team being edged out of the post-season puts you in a deep depression, that’s a clear sign that you’ve allowed a casual hope to slip out of its proper place. The same is true with a precious hope becoming an ultimate one. I have a precious hope that my adult children will continue to make good choices. That said, whether they do or don’t will not determine my self-worth or my sense of my life having meaning.
2. We need to anchor our ultimate hopes in SOMETHING WORTHY – we choose where we place our hopes. For our casual hopes, choosing which restaurant to go to is not a big deal. For our precious hopes, choosing which doctor to trust with analyzing our biopsy results is more significant. We want to have confidence in the worthiness our choice. Then there are ultimate hopes. I believe that where we choose to anchor our ultimate hopes is one of the most important decisions we will ever make. Choosing a worthy place to rest them is critical to becoming our True Selves, avoiding unnecessary pain, and enjoying the fullest experience of life.
So where will you choose to place your ultimate hopes for meaning, identity, self-worth, and a future? Obviously, you wouldn’t want to anchor these kinds of hopes to the volatility of the stock market or an ultimately unfulfilling bank account. Or even to your career which can change or end. What about in another person? What about in yourself? Where do you believe your strongest anchor lies? What is the bedrock that you can count on no matter what comes? That’s a question everyone needs to answer for themselves.
For me, the most worthy anchor for my ultimate hopes is my relationship with God. God fulfills my hopes for lasting meaning, for being deeply valued for who I am, and for a positive future beyond this life.
So when it comes to your hopes, keep them in their proper place. Don’t let a causal hope become a precious one, or a precious hope become ultimate. And make sure you anchor your ultimate hopes in something truly worthy of your trust. If you do, you’ll take another giant step toward Becoming Yourself.
I had an impromptu conversation with a good friend a while ago. She’s in her thirties, highly intelligent and inquisitive about life. She grew up going to church but stopped after high school. Since then, by her own admission, she hadn’t thought much about God until recently. She said she had a question for me. It went something like this:
“When I’m in nature, I feel like there’s something else out there with me. It’s like I’m sensing something bigger than myself but I don’t know what it is. I’m not sure if I think that’s God or something else. How can I tell?”
A clarification before going any further. The point of this post is not to try to prove the existence of God or to convince anyone to believe like I do. I consider myself a “faith and reason” person, meaning that I believe in God because of some very personal, subjective experiences I’ve had and also because of some intellectual reasons that I find compelling. But sharing those is not my goal here. I just want to give one of many potential frameworks that you could use to address the God question if you are like my friend.
Sometimes when we’re wrestling with what we believe about something, having someone else ask us specific questions about that topic can help clarify our thinking. So I asked her a series of questions:
You may read those questions and have different answers than my friend did, which lead you to a different conclusion. Either way, I think the “is there a God” question is an important one for each of us to answer one way or the other. Why? Because it has pretty big implications on your worldview, the way you see life and your place in it. And your worldview has a huge impact on your choices and actions, on how you live and who you become.