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Hope is the most powerful weapon on the market

by Carol Shirk Knapp
| July 29, 2020 1:00 AM

I slipped into a church service last Sunday and heard how people want hope.

The Cambridge English dictionary defines hope as “to want something to happen or to be true and usually have a good reason to think that it might.” I carried hope for five years waiting to move into our current living space. When it happened it became a done deal dream.

My husband Terry fell in love with Alaska on a summer visit to his uncle when he was a boy of 12. He kept hope in his heart to find his way back one day. Over 20 years later our family carved out our own 14 years of memories living in the far north.

Currently he is waiting for a neuro-stimulator implant in August — delayed more than once for various reasons. We hoped for the trial test back in March, but it didn’t happen until June. We hoped it would block chronic pain. It did not appear to at first. Because of our hope he asked for a little more time. The next day they got the right adjustment — a seventy percent decrease in pain he’s had for years!

When I felt I was supposed to enter a national writing contest I did — ignorant really of how many others had the same idea. I hoped two months for the date they said I would hear by mail. Nothing in the mailbox that day. What do you do with hope then?

You wait to go to town (Wasilla, Alaska) with your husband later in the day. You climb in the car and say in a resigned voice, “I guess it didn’t happen — no mail.” He says, “I got it already. Mail’s in the back seat.” You dive back there — and there’s your fancy little mail-o-gram (an antique now) and you’re on your way to NYC the next month!

There’s a proverb in the Bible that says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” Another one says, “Desire realized is sweet to the soul …” Actually the Bible is crammed with stuff about hope.

Here are some other “hopes” from this Book. “My hope is in You”...”Rejoicing in hope”...”Hope does not disappoint”...”But now faith, hope, love, abide these three.” A personal favorite is, “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

What a wonderful hopeful word is hope! So vital to life. Hope is the “Little Engine That Could.” The one who keeps on chugging. Even in daunting uphill challenges.

As long as I’ve got hope I can defend myself against anything. Because hope is the most powerful weapon on the market. You can’t exactly see it. But it will defeat the enemy every time.