O come, let us adore Him - Day 11

I love the Christlike attribute of developing HOPE.  It is the second attribute. Hope is an abiding trust that the Lord will fulfill His promises to us.  It encompasses confidence, optimism, enthusiasm and patient perseverance.  It is a belief that something positive will happen that is beyond our own poor mortal abilities.  We have hope that our trials will be turned into triumphs and our sorrows will eventually be turned into joys.  Hope is believing and expecting that something will occur.

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Sometimes it is very hard to obtain and maintain hope.  Life comes along in all of its complexities and frankly, stuff happens.  Often, heartache and pain come because of the consequences of our our choices, the choices of others that affect us and the frailties of the human condition that make us susceptible to all sorts of weakness and difficulties.  The trick is in figuring out how to maintain hope through it all.
When we have hope we can more easily work through trials and difficulties with the belief that all things will work together for our good.  Hope gives us the vehicle to ward off discouragement and to keep working, to keep trying and to keep moving forward each day.  We can't stand still for very long.  We are either moving forward with hope or we are moving hopelessly backward.  Hope give us the strength and courage to move forward because we can see the goal that is in sight and our hope in Jesus Christ gives us the strength to keep striving to inherit eternal life in the Celestial Kingdom.

I was reading my copy of Good Housekeeping the other night and came across a little article written by a women who had suffered great loss.  Since I was thinking about the concept of HOPE, what she said jumped out at me.  She had lost two step-son to drugs, her husband to divorce and her own daughter to a rare disease.  She said "There is nothing worse than the death of a child; many couples do not survive that experience.  We soldiered through it twice, but the third time, when (her husband's second son died), it broke us.  We fell into a terrible void.  My mother told me that nothing could alleviate this kind of sorrow, no Prozac or therapy, no vacations or retreats, nothing.  But what she said next offered some HOPE.  This was a long, dark tunnel that I would have to walk alone, she said, one step at a time, tear after tear, blindly - but with the certainty that there would be light at the end. I had no choice but to keep walking, day by day, until finally I saw the first glimpse of light. Since then, I have had to go through other tunnels.  Believing there will be light at the end - the promise of a new beginning - has helped me endure many challenges.  Every time I face darkness, I invoke my mother's mantra:  Just keep walking, nothing lasts forever; the nature of life is change."

Being blessed with hope, let us, as disciples, reach out to all whom for whatever reason, have "moved away from the hope of the gospel (Col. 1:23).  Let us reach out to lift hands which hand hopelessly down. Elder Neal A. Maxwell.  

Just keep walking.  Get up!  Keep going!  The promises of the Lord are sure.
Hope is trust in God's promises, faith that if we act now, the desired blessing will be fulfilled in the future.  Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help whose hope is in the Lord his God. Psalm 146:5.  With hope we can find joy in life, bear our trials with a firm assurance that one day we will rest from our afflictions.

2 Nephi 31:20 -   Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of HOPE, and a love of God and of all men.  Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father:  Ye shall have eternal life.