(Kate Culp is a student at California Baptist University in Riverside, CA and is majoring in International Studies. She recently graduated from Seminario del Oeste in Ensenada, Mexico.)
Hope can be defined as a feeling of expectation or desire for a certain thing to happen. The Bible defines it as the confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in His faithfulness. The hope that God gives is expressed throughout the entirety of the Bible; for example, the promised land and His pacts and promises to Abraham and to His people, and the prophecies of the one who is to come.
In the modern world, hope is never more present than when it is in the eyes of those who have seemingly lost hope. Families who are destitute, countries that can’t help their people, individuals who no longer believe in this world. Hope is found in God.
Christians in the first world know this and can see that hope as well. But there is nothing more satisfying than knowing that there are people who have hope in God when there isn’t any left for them here. On a missions trip to Cuba, I could feel the pressure of an overbearing government, but I had never experienced the palpable presence of God before church in Cuba. They sing a song titled “Hay Libertad” (There is Freedom) in which they sing out that there is freedom in the house of God. Coming from people whose concept of freedom is so limited, it was the most impactful thing I have ever heard. I’ve been in other churches where we sang this, but it never meant quite the same thing: hope. That experience, witnessing and interacting with people who used this song as a cry of hope completely changed how I view the world and even the power of God.
Ephesians 1:18 expresses this sense of hope perfectly: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people…”
