The etymology of the English word, hope, is unknown, but it seems to be from a North European, Germanic source that may have something to do with the English word, hop. I love that connection. It suggests that hope does not mean something I can reach from where I stand; rather I have to take a little leap toward the object of hope in order to reach it or perhaps even to see it.
What about in the Bible? That book is full of hope for the Promised Land in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and for Salvation in the New Testament. Were the word choices in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament as loosey goosey as my understanding or something stronger? ln Biblical Greek straight through to modern Greek, the word for hope is elpida. It is often used as a girl’s name. The word ismore assertive than in my definition. It encompasses a sense of expectation. When you hope for something, you do not have it in hand but you expect to get it.
In the story of Abraham, he, too, hears the voice of God (not one of the gods of his father), which tells him to take his family and his goods and “go to the land that God will show him.” This is a one way ticket to no clear destination! But his family does follow him, through a picaresque series of adventures passing through the lands of various kings until they reach a land they divide up amongst their children and their children’s children. He is the founder of a faith, the patriarch of a people. These Abraham stories must have resonated with the Mormons who followed their charismatic leader Brigham Young west, through plains and deserts, to settle near an inland salt lake, not unlike the Dead Sea of Israel. Perhaps by extension it applies to any families whose head of household had a vision that transformed the life of the family with an announcement like “we are going to make a change.” Maybe it involved going back to school or changing careers or moving or starting a business around that invention in the garage. Whether the family stifles that initiative or supports it, such moments are often ones that transform the future for those involved.
I have often wondered why Americans are so much more religious than Europeans. I have considered various possibilities but I think it is because over the past several hundred years, Americans found in the Bible, particularly in the concept of hope, so many episodes they interpreted as pertaining to themselves. What European authors of the 19thand 20th centuries have described as cocky and confident in the American personality is really an indication of our historic hopefulness. Certainly concepts of manifest destiny run deep and broad in our culture. Aspects of America were certainly described as “The Promised Land” and even “The Garden of Eden.” The Puritans and other religious settlers set out to build “God’s City on the Hill” as Augustine described it. Early explorers embarked on God’s work. There are many Biblical stories that surely inspired boatloads or truckloads of immigrants leaving behind one life to start another in a new country, or take ships to the gold fields of CA or AK or start wagon trains across the plains or aspire as entrepreneurs or inventors, hoping for a future better than the past, if not for themselves, then for their children. These examples did not use my feeble use of the word, hope. They demonstrate a leap, an expectation, a fierce intentionality.
So it is no surprise that the immigrants to America were not just poor people in steerage but also younger sons trapped by primogeniture laws, where the first son inherited just about everything and the younger ones were limited to two futures. If they stayed, since business or work were seen as unseemly for gentlemen, their options were to be on the dole of the older brother or marry a wealthy woman. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that often meant American heiresses, like Winston Churchill’s mother. For younger brothers who chafed against this, the other option was to leave the country altogether to make a fortune elsewhere. Ill-suited younger brothers nearly doomed the Jamestown settlement – John Smith wrote letters to England criticizing the lazy gentry and pleaing instead for settlers with skills and a work ethic. In any case, English novels are full of younger brothers who strode off to manly outposts like Canada or America and returned home wealthier than those who had stymied them. Hope intertwined with come-uppance. It was to America they went with a hope for opportunity and success. America is the real hero of these tales.
Let me ask you a question. Do you have that sort of hope today for yourself or your children or your community? Personally, I don’t sense that optimism in America anymore. My husband and I travel a lot, and my general impression is a sort of malaise, as President Carter said 30 years ago. I’m not sure if it is related to our protracted recession or to the erosion of trust that comes from a continuing slew of malfeasance in business, sports, academics, and government. Do you feel as cynical or disheartened as I do? If so, where can you turn for inspiration and hope? We’d like to hear a voice as clearly as Moses, Abraham, and Paul did, but most of us don’t, and if we did, a lot of us would probably tune it out. Most of us itch with doubt: should I do this or that or something else? If inertia wins, nothing is accomplished. If you feel that way, I’d like to wrap these comments up with two possible inspirations for hope.
One is to look at the personalities of the three Biblical heroes I mentioned. They weren’t Prince Charming heroes. They accomplished great things despite weaknesses in their own natures. Moses was a poor husband, for example. His father-in-law dragged Moses’s wife back to him, in public, to shame him into taking her back. Moses’s sister and brother chastised him in front of everyone regarding his poor leadership skills once they were in the desert. He often appears scared and doubtful, physicalized by a speech impediment of some kind. Abraham’s story includes several major moral lapses. He sacrificed his wife’s virtue to kings on two occasions in order to save his own life as they passed through those kingdoms. He succumbs to his wife’s jealous henpecking to banish another wife and her son to a likely death sentence in the desert. Paul appears, in his own letters, as a bullheaded, priggish, know-it-all. He may have had a traveling companion most of the time but it is not clear whether he has any friends, and he never talks about a family. Yet all three of these people are ones that God called to be great leaders, in spite of themselves. That could be you, too, if you look past your fears and weaknesses toward your goals.