The Gentle Power of Hope

It’s easy to get lost in the dark; even easier to get lost in the echo of your own pain. When buffeted by thoughts of failure, disappointment, and worthlessness, there’s a tendency to let the negativity take hold. To shape you into someone you know you’re not—like the slow poisoning of the mind—leaving you wondering how you got here and struggling to find a map showing the way back. Yet, no matter how dark things may get, a light still shines through it all. The gentle power of hope piercing through the dark—dissolving the poison—and you think to yourself, “Maybe there is a way.” 

As long as you hold onto hope, you can endure and make it through the darkest of times. Hope draws you forward into the light even when you fail or falter. It reminds you that life is beautiful, no matter how bleak things may seem. The power of hope is that it springs forth unbidden, quietly, without demand. It grows within because a deeper part of you still believes in a better future.

The Nature of Hope

Hope is a funny thing. It’s ephemeral, yet alive; powerful, albeit soft. It seems to spring forth from nowhere and can overcome any hardship, yet slips away when grasped too tightly. The trick is learning how to exist with it. Instead of letting it rise at random, you must learn to harness it at will and teach yourself how to generate it through a disciplined mind. 

Choosing your attitude means deciding whether to cling to hope or to wallow in despair. You can choose one or the other, and even oscillate between the two, but you can only be in one of those worlds at any given time. You either move into hope, or you move away from it. The longer you practice living in it, or living from it, the easier it is to hold. 

The Bible speaks of hope in the context of faith, but we often forget that without hope, faith isn’t possible.

To have faith in something means that first, you must hope for that unseen thing. Suppose you’re struggling in life; to have faith that things will get better means that you must have the hope that they will. Once you hold the hope, the faith becomes substantial. But how can you have faith that things will get better if you don’t harbor hope in the first place?

You can think of hope as a spiritual muscle. The more you practice living in that state, the stronger it becomes.

Hope as a Daily Practice

The true power of hope isn’t that it shows up when you need it, but that it can be cultivated into your daily life. However, you must eventually decide what it is you want to cultivate in your life. You can cultivate hope and learn how to harness its power to lead you into a better life, or you can cultivate despair and remain trapped in misery. 

It’s not something anyone can force you to do, though. You must choose to do this of your own accord each day. The truth is, you make this choice every day anyway, whether you realize it or not. Most people are simply choosing to cultivate the more painful side of life rather than the positive. This is why so many people suffer. When you focus on suffering, you get more suffering. When you focus on hope, you experience more peace and joy.

Hope is itself a movement from darkness to light, despair to wholeness, but its power comes when you choose it through conscious effort instead of falling into it when you’re at your darkest moments. It’s the repetition of hope and the vision of a better life for yourself or your loved ones that strengthens your inner foundation. 

The hard part is holding onto hope when you don’t see anything changing, because when you hope, you do so on a shorter time horizon—often for immediate relief—as situations can feel overwhelmingly painful, tragic, or uncomfortable. The goal, then, isn’t just to hope sporadically; it’s to hold onto it even when things seem completely hopeless. This is made more difficult because fear often steals it before you’ve had a chance to see its fruit.

The Battle Between Fear and Hope

Fear reveals itself in many ways—despair, worry, and resentment—but only gains a foothold because you let it. Again, it’s a choice. You choose to live with fear in all its incarnations, or you decide to live in hope, peace, and joy. You must think of this as a battle, and the two sides are pushing against each other. Whichever one you focus on grows stronger, and that choice is always yours. It’s your responsibility to be the General in your life and to choose who you want to side with. 

The State of Fear:

Fear is insidious. It will tell you you are alone, worthless, a failure, and that you don’t have what it takes. It’s a monster that loves to steal, draining the life from your soul like a vampire in ethereal form. Fear is void of love. Calloused. Menacing. Its only desire is to cut you down until you believe you’re less than you are. Its only motivation is to destroy and to revel in the destruction. 

The State of Hope:

Hope believes. It is beautiful, transcendent light where fear is pure darkness. Hope tells you that you are becoming. That you have what it takes. It’s the angel rescuing you from the fires of hell. Hope is full of love. Gentle, but powerful. It desires to lift you up, to set you on a path of peace, guiding you until you believe you are who you truly are. Hope only sees the good, even though it’s aware of the pain—a sanctuary of love and light amidst the darkness.

The Paradox:

The paradox is that hope requires surrender, not control. It often feels like trusting a candle to stay lit during a storm, fearing the wind and rain will snuff it out, yet forgetting that hope is the eternal fire that burns regardless of the weather, and you can never quench its flame. You can only forget it’s there. You can only harden yourself to its presence and convince yourself it never existed. But if you choose to look, the evidence of hope is always there. 

The Evidence of Hope

The power of hope is all around you. Each morning, the sun rises regardless of how dark or stormy the night may have been. Spring always follows winter—new growth after a forest fire. It’s revealed in each decision to love again after heartbreak. To forgive those who have hurt you. To trust in a better tomorrow despite how dismal life may seem today. 

You can find it simply by looking back on your life and remembering where you’ve come from. By seeing the pain and hurt you’ve endured and yet overcome. It was there when you felt utterly broken but decided to take that next step, or to trust someone when you weren’t sure if you could ever trust again. It’s the slow mending of the heart after losing a loved one. 

Hope is the divine order amidst the chaos of the world. It’s more than comfort. It changes your very essence if you let it. Where once your heart was hardened through suffering, it finds softness despite the pain because hope is not the absence of suffering, but the birth of meaning through it.

The freedom you hope for comes by accepting your ordeals and, through hope, recognizing the freedom you seek. This is how you become the light, and how you change the world.

Becoming the Light

You cannot recognize light without first experiencing darkness, nor healing without pain, nor love without hate. The very struggles that bring you to your knees are the same ones that can shape you for the better. They can strengthen you. Develop your resolve. Give you purpose. 

Hope is the guiding light in an otherwise dark existence. It anchors your sanity. It’s like a breath of air after being submerged too long in the pain and suffering of life. The longer you embrace it and work toward a better tomorrow, the sooner you begin to see a shift in your reality. This doesn’t mean you don’t weather storms. It doesn’t mean you don’t experience heartache. No. It means you learn to navigate the hard times with your head held high and a smile on your face, even as tears run down your cheeks. You’re able to do this because you’ve cultivated the ability to see beyond the pain into something more beautiful. Into a life worth living.

When you learn to do this, you become the light, and your life will never be the same.

Until next time,

Josiah

For more information and resources, visit josiahthibodeau.com