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hope which He is determined to spend
His limitless energies fulfilling-the
greatest hope there is!
T his world needs hope-you need
hope.
Hope means, by dictionary defini–
tion, "to cherish a desire for some–
thing wi th sorne expectation of ob–
taining it."
lf Hope Were Fulfllled
Let's leave the world scene and start
small-with
you.
What do
you
hope
for? What do you desire to obtain?
What is your own individual and per–
sonal hope-apart from a hopeless
world? A raise in pay? Maybe just a
job? A new car? A home? A husband
or wife or children? Financia! securi–
ty? A friendly neighbor? Hea lth ?
Longevity? Happiness? Freedom
from fear ?
What if your hope were fulfilled?
Let 's say you want to gel married.
So, you get married . Five years pass.
You've achieved what you hoped for:
You're married. The ceremony is
over; it was a lovely church wedding;
all your friends were there; you were
given fabulous gifts by relatives and
friends alike; the honeymoon was a
dream fulfilled that you look fondly
back on with misty-eyed memory.
But now the flower gi rls a re gone; the
rose-colored glasses you saw things
through have turned to g ray. The ha–
bies (you so hoped for) are here and
the diapers and the sleepless nights
along with them. Bilis are mounting;
your mate is nagging. You both
work, but you've spent almost as
much time going over your budget
with cut after cut as you have work–
ing on your job. The car needs repair,
you don't know how you are going to
pay for increasing insurance and fue!
ra tes, the kids a re outgrowing clothes
faster than you can buy them, but
your overextended checking ¡1ccount,
your mortgage, your time-payment
bilis and your credit-card balances
(all in the red) say you can barely
afford to put food on the table.
Your hope of five years ago is ful–
filled-and it now seems a hopeless
situation. Now what do you hope
for? A
raise!
If
you j ust earned one
hundred dollars more a month ...
So, you
get
a raise! Your hope is
again fulfilled. But you soon discover
Th9
PLAIN TRUTH February 1979
that intlation has more than caten up
t he advantages of the raise, your
four-year-old broke an arm and your
wife wrecked the car. You' re deeper
in debt than before.
Now what do you hope for?
Tomorrow's Silver Llnlng
Hope is a strange thing. You 've prob–
ably noticed tha t you never hope for
something you a lready have. You al–
ways hope for sorne future improve–
ment on your present lot in life. For–
tunately, we can change our hopes,
upgrade them as each in turn be–
comes fulfilled (oras we give up hope
of them being ful filled). Hopc makes
the world go around- the possibility
of future betterment, of tomorrow's
silver lining for the clouds of today.
Without hope people don't try. The
fact is that each hope fulfilled de–
mands a new hope to live for.
In human history hope has a
strange cycle. Whether you pick
Genghis Kh a n, communism o r
Chr istopher Columbus, the same un–
failing cycle occurs. Hope begins in
despair. That is, the individual seems
to be in a bopeless si tuation-then an
idea strikes and hope fiares anew.
The individual now has a reason to
live, because he feels that there may
be sorne slim chance of achieving the
goal he has seen. Life has meaning
again. He strives (for his individual
hope, or perhaps his hope is big
enough to encompass a group as
la rge as a whole nation, religion, or
empi re) to accompl ish tha t hope. He
succeeds!
Enter Apathy
Yet , oddly enough, nothing in history
fails quite to the extent of success! In
the footsteps of success invariably
follows one degree or another of apa–
thy. The individua l or the group be–
comes careless with the success
achieved . With no bigger, newer
hope, there is no reason to strive, to
live, to face a challenge anymore.
Things bog down. The goal, which
seemed so golden at the beginning,
loses its glitter. Apathy breeds cyni–
cism. Cynicism, in its turn; engen–
ders despair. And the cycle is right
back where it started.
The reason is because the
hope is
never big enough!
A hope, to be lasting, must be big
enough so that it can never be accom–
plished in its entirety. Otherwise a
new, bigger and more vigorous hope
must follow
on the heels of the ful–
fillment of the past hope.
Example From Hlstory
Let's take Christopher Columbus's
hope for a n example. Columbus
hoped to prove his idea that the world
was round indeed and not flat, as
most of the people of his day be–
lieved. For most of his adult years,
that hope drove him to accomplish
the things which he did. Nothing in
his life swayed him from pursuing
that one goal. All other things were
subservient to it. Family, job, hi s own
health were all spent in feverish de–
sire to attain that one hope. T he des–
pair of the humdrum life of his age
and circumstance was given meaning
and reason.
lt
was a great hope.
lt
was greater than anyone else had
come up with in his generation.
1t
seemed fooli sh, but he believed in it
and was driven to accomplish it at all
costs.
Finally, he convinced the Crown of
Spain to back his idea, his goal, his
hope. The queen even hocked her
jewels to finance his venture. Colum–
bus was given three ships and a crew
from the prisons of her government
to prove his hope.
But, believe it or not , his hope was
not big enough!
He hoped that by
sailing west he could reach t hc
East- lndia, China, the Orient, fab–
ulously rich. What proving hi s hope
accomplished was greater than his
hope! Instead of proving that you
could reach the East by sailing west
(and so proving that the world was
round and not tlat), he carne upon a
whole new world!
Not only was his life's hope
achieved, but a goal fa r richer than
he had imagined was revealed. Of
course, he was hailed as a great ex–
plorer, unique as fa r as the world of
his day realized-he was honored,
feted, and scnt back to govern the
new lands he had discovered. The
hope of his entire previous life was
fulfilled and then sorne!
But now what did he have to livc
for? What
new
hope, greater and
more significant than the first, did he
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