Hope is the origin of faith

Today our class lecture was about pediatric hematology and oncology. We ended with this documentary about a family who was dealing with their son's losing battle to cancer. Following the son's death there was an interview with the father about his spiritual life. I didn't get the vibe that the father was particularly devout to any certain doctrine through he did say he prayed a lot more. One thing he did say that made me stop and think was, "I really, really hope that there's a better place."

Faith is being sure of what we hope for...

That's what Hebrews 11 says, that faith is the assurance of things hoped for. We are faithless, but never without hope. Faith is something we have to be taught, it's something we have to have modeled as seen through God faithfulness to Israel and through the life and death of Christ. But hope does not need to be taught. Hope is all we know how to do. Even when we say things are hopeless, what we mean that there is no realistic way of ever getting what we really hope for. Hope, hope: our desires, dreams, wishes, yearnings. My hopes have done terrible things to me.

But it's these hopes that lead people to cry out. Like some sort of grassroots prayer, it's people crying out through tears and sighs and frustration saying "this is not what I hope for; this is so far from what I hope for."

Faith is being sure of what we hope for

So faith is taking these hopes and being sure about them. When hopes stop being wished for and start being waited for there is faith. So we take these hopes we have and we look at God and the things God seems to be faithfully working toward and we decide which hopes seem to be worthy of our faith.

I really, really hope that there is a better place.