Hope

A few weeks ago I spoke in church on the topic of hope and preparing for the talk was a really good experience.  I learned a lot about hope, which is a word we use and hear frequently, but which is kid of nebulous and hard to pin down. 

Just for the purposes of my personal history, I want to make a record of some of the things I learned during that week of preparation. I think I'll just copy and paste most of the talk I wrote out.  Luckily, I didn't read it word for word, but whenever I speak I have to have the talk written out completely and on the stand just in case I completely drew a blank.  It can happen.  

Here it is:

Preparing for this talk, I realized that I don’t really understand hope in a gospel sense, even though it shows up frequently in the scriptures, usually listed with faith, hope, charity.  So I studied the topic of hope the way I should study topics more often, but rarely do, and it was an awesome experience  I looked up all the scriptures about hope and read most of the conference addresses about hope, and I feel like I learned a lot and understand better why hope is so important, but I have so much more to learn.  These are the questions I focused on.

What is hope and how does it help me get to where I want to be eternally? How are hope and faith related? How does hope make my challenges more manageable? And how do I increase my hope?

We use the word hope frequently in casual conversation: “I hope I get the teacher I want for Algebra.” “I hope it stays sunny until December.” And this one is for Joseph, “I hope that Santa brings me the new Lego Wii game for Christmas.” But, the scriptures talk about a different kind of hope.   What the apostles have called ultimate or saving hope.   

Moroni 7:41 says this: “And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall 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.

So, this is a very different hope, a hope in Christ and his atonement.  President Uchtdorf gave a fantastic talk in 2008 called “The Infinite Power of Hope.” He said:  Hope is the abiding trust that the Lord will fulfill His promise to us. It is confidence that if we live according to God’s laws and the words of His prophets now, we will receive desired blessings in the future. It is believing and expecting that our prayers will be answered. 

A few words stand out to me there.  He said that Hope is trust in the Lord.  Confidence.  Believing and expecting our prayers are answered.  Implies certainty, sureness.

One of our challenges is to place our trust and hope in the Savior, not in temporal things that sometimes fail us.  Several scriptures talk about Hope as an anchor – something steady and sure and unmoving. It’s just part of life that many times we trust in and hope for temporal things but sometimes we are disappointed.  Our bodies don’t always work the way they should, they age, they fall apart.  The economy is struggling and the world is in chaos.  People disappoint us or use their agency in ways that hurt us.  But, we don’t need to lose confidence or despair.  Despair is the opposite of hope.  Satan is the ultimate pessimist, and despair is one of his favorite tools.  He wants us to lose hope, because then we take our eyes off the source of hope, the Savior.   If we place our hope and trust in Christ, he will never disappoint us.  

We live in a cynical and distrustful world, There’s lots of contention. It’s easy to get wrapped up in and linger in cynicism. President Hinckley talked often about how cynicism just holds us back and cripples us from progressing. Because we know about Christ and the atonement, we can be hopeful and positive.  In Conference last October – Carl Cook of the Seventy gave a talk called “Look Up”.  Shortly after he was called as a General Authority he was in an elevator with President Monson.  The Prophet could tell that Elder Cook looked discouraged and overwhelmed by the demands of his calling.  He told him that “it’s always better to look up.”  That’s great prophetic counsel - to look beyond the moment and up to the Savior.

Our son Brandon is currently serving a mission in the Ukraine.  He has encountered much cynicism and distrust.  My impression from his letters has been that, in general, people aren’t very hopeful.  I wondered if this hopelessness and distrust affects their ability to exercise faith and be open to the truths of the gospel.  I asked Brandon about it last week. In his email he answered back with his perspective:

“It's definitely true that Ukrainians do not have a lot of hope.  They have lived in a society where the leaders told them that all religion was a lie to force people to do the will of a few people.  Soon enough they came to realize that the Communist government was taking away their agency to fit an agenda.  Due to this, they have a general distrust towards government figures, towards foreigners, towards one another and towards God.  Most seem to feel that they have to cling to what is theirs, even to the depriving of that which is their neighbor's.  They have no hope in one another, much less in a merciful God.  And many don't want to come out of their stupor of drunken anger to see the light, probably because they're afraid that once they get their hopes up they will be dropped, yet again, on their face.”

It is so sad to me that the hope that this people have historically placed in government and leaders has failed them, and that now it’s hard for them to hope. What the missionaries know and offer is hope in something better, something lasting and sure. Because people are so lacking in hope, they seem to have a really hard time planting the seeds of faith.  

It seems to me that hope and faith are closely linked.  They work together. Elder Uchtdorf said “If we’re not hopeful, it’s hard to be faithful.  If we start losing faith, our hope dims.  By the same token, if we want to increase our faith, we can be more hopeful.”  Brandon also told me in his letter that, in his experience faith and hope word together and  when one goes up, the other goes up, strengthening the other and leading us closer to God.

At the same time, hope and faith seem to differ slightly. As I studied this week, one idea I had is that faith seems to be belief in a principle and hope seems to be confidence that the principle applies to me!  So, I might have faith that the Savior did atone for sins and hope and confidence that this applies to me, and that I can benefit.  Hope is a critical part of this, because if I think it’s possible for people to believe something is true, but not believe that it applies to them.  I think that’s why faith and hope are so intrinsically connected. 

It’s almost General Conference, and I am positive that what we will hear from our prophet will be words of hope, despite all the discouraging news in the world today and the cynical world we all live in.  Prophets are seers, or see-ers. So, they see what is coming, whether positive or negative, and they warn us and counsel us. So, they know more than anyone what there is to despair about as the world rejects truth and becomes more wicked. And yet, they are always incredibly hopeful. I remember very clearly President Hinckley’s hopeful address less than a month after 9/11, and I wondered this last week what the prophets said at other tough times in history.  I looked up Conference addresses from other challenging times. What I found was that every prophet shared his hope and urged the people to be hopeful, no matter what was going on at the time. From Joseph Smith and Brigham Young at the time of the Saint’s persecutions, to the prophets at the time of the Great Depression and the World Wars, 9/11 and the times of war since.  At our last Conference in April, President Monson said this: 

We live in troubled times. I assure you that our Heavenly Father is mindful of the challenges we face. He loves each of us and desires to bless us and to help us. How blessed we are, my brothers and sisters, to have the restored gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives and in our hearts. It provides answers to life’s greatest questions. It provides meaning and purpose and hope to our lives.

We have been reading the Book of Mormon as a family, and I have been struck by the way the prophets in the scriptures, just like the prophets today, constantly encouraged the people to look forward to Christ with hope.  I think Mormon and Moroni are especially poignant examples of this. Mormon had lived his entire life in a world filled of despair. By the time he was 15– the age of sophomores in high school.- he was in charge of the Nephite armies.   His people rejected the truth, and behaved in increasingly depraved and wicked ways. He saw terrible things on the part of the Lamanites and his people, the Nephites.  He said this in Mormon 2:18: "a continual scene of wickedness and abominations has been before mine eyes ever since I have been sufficient to behold the ways of man."

 As a prophet, I’m sure he knew that the Nephites would eventually destroy themselves if they didn’t repent.  Mormon’s son Moroni was raised in this same environment, and spent the end of his life alone and hiding out after witnessing the complete destruction of his people.  Yet, amazingly, both Mormon and Moroni spoke emphatically about hope. Moroni quoted a letter from his father about hope in Moroni 7, and in Moroni 10, one of the last counsels in the record Moroni wrote, he said that we can’t be saved without hope. Now, hope for Mormon and Moroni was obviously not grounded in their day to day reality.  It was grounded in something greater.  All the prophets, ancient and modern, were hopeful because their hope was placed in Christ, not in the world.  I would like to try harder follow the examples of these prophets. I would like to avoid getting caught up in the grind of the day to day and instead look forward with hope.

Finally, If I have hope, then I trust not only that God exists and that Christ atoned for me, but that I can be saved, that Christ can help me every day.  The atonement is not only for sin, but also for suffering, for pain, for disappointment, for failures, for discouragement, bad days, hard times. Hope in Christ and the atonement give me the strength and ability to handle day to day life.   And if I really have hope in the Savior, then I know with a certainty that the atonement applies to me and will help me today and is what will allow me to be clean enough to be with my Father in Heaven someday. 

As I thought about hope this week, I tried to decide what I could do to increase my hope in the Savior.  My thought is that, as I work on my relationship with Christ, as I understand the atonement better, as I pray and call on the Lord for the help I need every day and listen to what the Spirit whispers to me, as I choose faith and hope over despair, then my hope will  increase.

We have so many reasons to feel hopeful. We have the truth.  We have God’s power on the earth, and available to us through the priesthood.  We have a prophet who is seeing ahead and counseling us how to be safe and happy.  We have temples where we can make sacred promises and get richly blessed.  We have every reason to be hopeful, no matter what is going on in our personal lives or the world. 

I want to conclude with a quote from President Hinckley:

Hope is a most powerful influence in our lives. Yes indeed, we do live in a troubled and challenging world. But we live in one of the greatest periods of time in all the history of the entire world. It is a time that I believe every prophet since the creation of the earth prophesied of and looked forward to. We have every reason to be optimistic and full of hope—hope for this life, hope for our children, and hope for the eternities to come. And so I say never, never, never let Satan’s power of belittlement, discouragement, or disillusionment direct your lives. Never, never, never lose hope.