A God of Hope

I did a random open in my New Testament yesterday and landed on this verse from Paul: “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost” (Romans 15:13). I love that idea that God is a God of hope and that He provides us peace and joy through our faith. We can abound in hope because of the Holy Ghost. Sometimes in the thick of life’s challenges, what we need most is hope that our struggles are temporary and that we can make it through them. As a parent of six children sometimes it feels like total chaos, and it can be hard to have hope for the future when there are so many difficulties in the moment. Sunday was one of those days in which it felt like a volcano erupted at home and everything was in commotion. One child was going around spitting on the others, another was throwing insults right and left at their siblings, another was screaming at us about something they wanted which we asked them to wait for, and yet another continued bombarding us with demands for this and that. The decibel level continued to rise as everyone sought to be heard and we tried to read scriptures as a family, an effort that provided totally futile. I gave up on scriptures and told everyone we were leaving and managed to get four of them in the car and started driving. Sometimes they just need to all be strapped in! I decided on the fly where to go and ended up at a park where they could try to run off some of their energy. It is in moments like this as all seems to be falling apart that we need hope! We need hope that the intense struggles of the moment do not represent the future, that the chaos is temporary and that there are brighter days ahead. I am grateful that we have a God of hope who is also a “high priest of good things to come” (Hebrews 9:11). 

                I have been reading the book The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien to my son, and I appreciated the optimism in Gandalf the wizard in a scene towards the end of the book. The dwarfs had taken over the mountain where the dragon, now dead, had kept all of its gold and they were refusing to share it with other parties who rightly deserved some of it. The leader of the dwarves, Thorin, was greedily seeking to hoard all of the wealth for him and his people as he claimed his new place as king under the mountain. Things were at a standstill between the dwarves holed up in the mountain and the elves and others outside of it (including those who had actually killed the dragon) who sought their fair share of the treasure. Gandalf, who had originally sent Thorin and the dwarves on their journey, showed up and came to speak with Thorin during the impasse. As they sought to negotiate, and the greedy dwarf was being very difficult, Gandalf remarked, “You are not making a very splendid figure as King under the Mountain. But things may change yet.” It was in fact hard to see how things could possibly change with Thorin as stubborn as he was, and everything seemed to be leading towards a terrible confrontation between the two groups. And just as that was about to erupt, a common enemy of both elves and dwarves—the goblins—came on the attack and the two sides joined together in a common cause and were forced to fight together for their lives against the goblins. All animosity between them disappeared, and at one critical point Thorin saved the day in a bold stand and ultimately gave his life in the battle for his fellow dwarves and elves. Gandalf had been right to believe that change could happen, and that is the kind of hope that we all need. Sometimes we have a really hard time seeing any hope for the future because our challenges seem like they will never end, but we should look to the future and say, “Things may change yet!” And we must always put our trust in the God of hope who can give us peace and love and can cause us to abound in hope for those we love around us. The difficulties of today need not define the future, and there is always “hope for a better world” as Moroni put it (Ether 12:4). We must always “have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise” (Moroni 7:41). Because of Jesus Christ, we know there are better days ahead for all who have faith in Him and His promises.