Nuanced Hope Feeds My Faith

Hope vs. faith…what’s the difference? I struggle with this a little because throughout my life I’ve thought about Faith in Christ and asking how having Hope in Christ is different.  I’ve found scriptures that say faith is bourne of hope as well as scriptures saying hope is bourne of faith.  Preach my Gospel mentions that hope is “an abiding trust that the Lord will fulfill his promises” while it also says Faith in Christ means that we trust Him and are confident He loves us.” Those are basically the same thing!

What is the nuanced difference?

I looked at the opposite of hope to see if that would help guide me.  Dieter F. Utchdorf expressed the difference between hope and its opposite, despair, in beautiful words:

"The adversary uses despair to bind hearts and minds in suffocating darkness. Despair drains from us all that is vibrant and joyful and leaves behind the empty remnants of what life was meant to be. Despair kills ambition, advances sickness, pollutes the soul, and deadens the heart. Despair can seem like a staircase that leads only and forever downward.

Hope, on the other hand, is like the beam of sunlight rising up and above the horizon of our present circumstances. It pierces the darkness with a brilliant dawn. It encourages and inspires us to place our trust in the loving care of an eternal Heavenly Father, who has prepared a way for those who seek for eternal truth in a world of relativism, confusion, and of fear."

After reading these two descriptions and searching through more material, I called my mother to get her insight.  After that discussion this quote brought to mind an illustration of myself either looking downward into a never-ending pit, or upward, out over a beautiful ocean sunrise.  I could feel the despair of that pit.  But then I could also feel the hope of that sunrise.  And that’s when I realized I’d found my nuance.

Hope, for me, informs my faith.  Hope is looking out and finding a vision.  Hope sets our sights on higher, nobler, greater things.  Hope is what lights the fire in our souls.  Then our faith kicks in and we do something about that hope.  Our faith is action based and hope gives that faith a direction to go.  Hope truly is like the beam of sunlight rising up and above the horizon of our present circumstances, and then our faith is us joining with Christ to do something about those circumstances.

We get to focus our faith toward Christ as he fills us with hope.  Hope that we can do it.  Hope that he will not fail us.  Hope that as we walk towards him in faith, the impossible will become possible.  Hope that as we leave behind us the shackles of sin He will help us fill those holes with joy and healing.  As we face the Savior, his promises can fill us with hope to the point of moving us to action, allowing us to take part in those promises.  In this way I would say hope sets our sights on the future while faith is called upon daily to get us there.

In my own life there have been countless moments where I have had to rely on hope to get my feet back under me after life knocked me over.  In those moments, my faith was weak and my trust in Christ was thin.  But my hope was not gone.  My hope that everything I believed in was true.  Sometimes, when coming out of dark moments in my life, all I can do is sit on that beach and hope the sun will rise.  And when it does, by the mercy of Christ, it can slowly build as I let it, eventually getting to the point where I can begin walking again with Christ and faith in him.  Sometimes that process for me is instantaneous.  Sometimes it can take days or weeks or months. But it’s my hope in Christ that lifts me out of the darkness and my faith in Christ that gets me walking forward again.

I invite each one of you to consider if you’re looking into that pit or if you’re watching that ocean sunrise or if you’re somewhere in between.  Consider where Christ...God...your belief in something higher...is and let what you know about that higher power work in you, turning fully to that sunrise.  Hold on to that hope and let it build into faith.  In my belief, Christ enacted the atonement so that our efforts would not be in vain.  I pray we can find more hope and faith in Christ this year, as well as the joy it is to seek after Him.