“Hope is not wishful thinking, nor fanciful imagination. Hope is the realism of the man of faith who knows that there is a line of meaningful development from the past, through the present, into the future. Hopelessness is the true condition of hell.”
–Joshua Haberman

I LOVE reading other people’s word pictures. Pretty sure I have never visualized HOPE in the way that Haberman worded it above. It really helped to clarify that those without hope have no willingness to accept the true definition of the word “future”. People without hope can know of the future, but only as it is limited by the past and the present.

Check out these definitions that Merriam-Webster gives for “hopelessness”:
1 a : having no expectation of good or success : despairing b : not susceptible to remedy or cure c : incapable of redemption or improvement
2 a : giving no ground for hope : desperate b : incapable of solution, management, or accomplishment : impossible

As I searched in the BibleGateway.com for the phrase “without hope” this morning, Ephesians 2:12 jumped out:
“remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.”

Notice the “separated from Christ” and the “without God”? WOW! Does that echo Haberman’s words or what?

May these words from Job 11:16-19 bless you today and all days
“You will surely forget your trouble,
recalling it only as waters gone by.

Life will be brighter than noonday,
and darkness will become like morning.

You will be secure, because there is hope;
you will look about you and take your rest in safety.

You will lie down, with no one to make you afraid,
and many will court your favor.”