Hope: Quotes Worth Having

“Ministers and congregation both, they came to church year after year, and who is to say how if at all their lives were changed as the result? If you’d stopped and asked them on any given Sunday, I suspect they would have said they weren’t changed much.  Yet they kept on coming anyway; and beneath all the lesser reasons they had for doing so, so far beneath that they themselves were only half aware of it, I think there was a deep reason, and if I could give only one word to characterize that reason, the word I would give is hope….

I think it is hope that lies at our hearts and hope that finally brings us all here.  Hope that in spite of all the devastating evidence to the contrary, the ground we stand on is holy ground because Christ walked here and walks here still.  Hope that we are known, each one of us, by name, and that out of the burning moments of our lives he will call us by our names to the lives he would have us live and the selves he would have us become. Hope that into the secret grief and pain and bewilderment of each of us and of our world he will come at last to heal and to save. “ Frederick Buechener-Originally published in Secrets in the Dark

NRS Psalm 130:7 O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem

“Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.´   Lin Yutang

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful

makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.  Reinhold Niebuhr

NRS Romans 8:18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. 26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

“But hope has an astonishing resilience and strength. Its very persistence in our hearts indicates that it is not a tonic for wishful thinkers but the ground on which realists stand.”  —Kathleen Norris, Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life

“Hoping does not mean doing nothing… It is the opposite of desperate and panicky manipulations, of scurrying and worrying. And hoping is not dreaming. It is not spinning an illusion or fantasy to protect us from our boredom or our pain. It means a confident, alert expectation that God will do what He said He will do. It is imagination put in the harness of faith. It is a willingness to let God do it His way and in His time.”  –Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1980/2000), 144.

What a fellowship, what a joy divineLeaning on the everlasting arms.What a blessedness, what a peace is mineLeaning on the everlasting arms.

Chorus:Leaning, leaningSafe and secure from all alarms.Leaning, leaningLeaning on the everlasting arms.

O how sweet to walk in this pilgrim wayLeaning on the everlasting arms.O how bright the path grows from day to dayLeaning on the everlasting arms. What have I to dread; what have I to fearLeaning on the everlasting arms.I have blessed peace with my Lord so nearLeaning on the everlasting arms.