We All Need HOPE

Hold

On -

Perseverance,

Endurance

Yesterday I made a comment to a quote expressing a limited hope targeted to a certain group of people for basically following his or her own heart.  Perhaps I was out of line with my answer, but I elaborated as the one who posted the quote followed my comment with a question that sounded to me as though she is feeling despair.

But we have to have hope.  Hope is what brought the children of Israel out of bondage.  And it was hope that caused slaves in America to move from the South to the North.  It was with hope that so many Jewish people (among others) stayed hidden before and during World War II.  It is with hope that we are even to leave our house each morning.

I like how President Uchtdorf says, “Hope, on the other hand, is like the beam of sunlight rising up and above the horizon of our present circumstances.” In his talk The Infinite Power of Hope

We all hope to get out of bondage. We all hope that we can get through each day without harm or accident – whether physically, emotionally, spiritually, or mentally.  We hope that our loved ones will be safe.  We hope that things could be different.  We hope that some things will remain the same.  We hope that our children have learned what we tried to teach them.  We often hope that they may turn out better than we did.

If we didn’t have hope, we wouldn’t try new things.  We wouldn’t try to run (let alone finish) the race.  We wouldn’t put forth any effort without hope.  We wouldn’t go to the doctor’s or the attorney’s office or even work without hope.  We wouldn’t vote or elect officials.  We wouldn’t leave our comfort zone – though often times it may be our hope that we won’t ever have to.  There is no growth without hope.