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The word "hope" has been quietly ruined in modern English.
We say we hope it stops raining. We hope the traffic isn't bad. We hope the results come back clear. In every one of those sentences, hope means something like "I would prefer this, but I have no real reason to expect it, and I am bracing for the alternative."
That is not what the Bible means when it uses the word.
This week's theme: Hope.
Today, why the hope you have been carrying is probably too small, and what the real one looks like.
HOPE
Paul writes something at the end of Romans 15 that sounds almost impossible if the modern definition of hope is the one you are working with.
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."
There is a lot there in just one sentence!
Notice first that hope is described as something you can overflow with. Not something you cling to. Not something you scrape together on a hard morning. Something so full inside you that it spills over the edges into the people around you.
Nobody overflows with the modern kind of hope. The modern kind is a thin, brittle wish. You cannot overflow with a wish.
The reason Paul can talk about overflow is because the Greek word he uses, elpis, means something different from the English word we translate it as. Elpis is a confident expectation. Not a wish. Not a preference. An expectation, grounded in the character and the promises of a God who has done what he said he would do every single time.
The Christian, in the Bible's picture, is not the person who is optimistically wishing things will be alright. The Christian is the person who has, by faith, been given a specific, concrete confidence about how the story ends, and who lives inside that confidence in the present tense.
That is why hope in scripture is often listed alongside faith and love as one of the three enduring things. It is not a mood. It is a settled state. It is the interior posture of someone who knows how the ending goes and is walking toward it.
If your hope has felt small lately, this is worth sitting with.
Most of us are not lacking in wishes. We have plenty of things we wish were different. We are lacking in something sturdier. We are lacking a confident expectation. A settled sense that whatever season we are in, however unresolved, God has already secured what actually matters and is at work in what he has not yet resolved.
The good news of this week is that this kind of hope is not something you have to manufacture.
Look at the verse again. It is the God of hope who fills you with it. Hope is not a mood you generate. It is a gift the Holy Spirit produces in you when you trust in him. Your job is not to feel hopeful. Your job is to keep trusting. The overflow comes from him.
This week we will walk through this from a few angles. Tomorrow we look at Abraham, who Paul says "hoped against hope." Wednesday we look at what real hope feels like on an ordinary morning when nothing has changed. Thursday, a practical for keeping hope alive in a long wait. Friday, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, whose hope had died and then met them. Saturday, back to the Greek. Sunday we rest with Lamentations.
For now, one question.
What have you been calling "hope" that might actually only be "wishing"?
YOUR ONE THING FOR TODAY
Notice today, at least once, when you use the word "hope" in a sentence.
Then ask yourself honestly. Am I talking about a wish, or a confident expectation?
Awareness is where the week begins.
Father, my hope has been small. I have been wishing when I could have been expecting. Fill me this week with the kind of hope Paul talked about. The overflow kind. The confident kind. The kind that does not depend on how the week is going. Amen.
OVER TO YOU
What is one thing you have been hoping for that has felt more like wishing lately? A word or a line. Every reply read.
God bless you, my friend.
The LowKey Christian
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