Hope: A longing or a dream.
We hope for a lot of things. That our job will get better; that we won’t get sick; or that we’ll get healthy again. We hope our kids will turn out okay, we hope that we’ll do well on the next project/test/report/etc.
We hope on all of these things. Wishing, dreaming, hoping that life will get better. And that’s usually what we think hope is, a future wish.
But in the New Testament hope was completely different. People were sick, or in prison, or beaten, or separated from their families, and they had hope. But their hope was never about, “I wish life will get better.” No, every time they expressed hope it always came out like this, “Because Christ died, I can have hope.”
They knew life would get better. They knew they could hold out for the best. Why? Because they grave had already been defeated and death had already been overcome.
Our hope is not based on a future wish, but a past truth.
