Hope Transforms the Present

Hope is future-looking and paradoxically very much rooted in the present moment. Hope cannot be reduced to the end, the final outcome that one looks forward to. The focus of hope cannot be diminished to the actualization of a goal, something solely happening eventually, in the future. Instead, the focus of true hope is the beginning: the beginning of true life, the beginning of acknowledging the role that we need to play in an adverse situation.[1] Hope is the beginning of new creation — that is precisely how we understand a hopeless situation and act in a healing and transformative way. 

Focusing on the future and hoping for brighter prospects is important. However, an emphasis on future bright expectations is not an excuse to refrain from participation in the present.[2] Rather, a robust understanding of hope should be the impetus for us to engage with problems and moments of suffering. A person of hope does not wait for God to do some magic (though this is not to deny that God does miracles) or for life-situations to transform for the better in an automatically miraculous way.[3] Rather, hope invites a person to partner with God in moving through brokenness and suffering. Hope impels us to discover the plan of God and cooperate with God right now amid suffering and hopelessness. 

A true spirit of hope propels us to nurture our lives and that of others and offers healing and courage, right now. This understanding of hope does not make us apathetic and inert onlookers, expecting something extraordinary to happen incredibly in the future. Rather, hope makes us responsible and courageous in facing difficult and painful moments of life. Hope makes us an instrument of transformative thoughts and acts. 

           Hope is not only forward-looking but also forward-moving, and therefore, transforms the present, too.[4]

 

John Baptist OFM Cap., 

Clinical Counselor & Psychospiritual Resource Person, 

York, PA, USA

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[1] Moltmann, Jurgen in Hoover-Kinsinger, Sandra, Hoping Against Hope: An Integration of the Hope Theology of Jurgen Moltmann and C.R. Snyder’s Psychology of Hope, Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 2018, Vol. 37, No. 4, 313-322.

[2] Moltmann, Jurgen, 1967, The Theology of Hope, SCM Press Ltd. 

[3] Moltmann, Jurgen, 1967, The Theology of Hope.

[4] Moltmann, Jurgen, 1967, The Theology of Hope.