The last few weeks have been tough. On all of us. Looking at the news and the atrocities in the world, it would be easy to lose hope.
But we must not.
Hope is critical to life. In fact, it’s been scientifically proven!
Back in the 1950’s, Curt Richter, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University, performed a study now known as the “Drowning Rats” experiment. Richter placed several dozen rats in a bucket of water. They all drowned after only a few minutes. He repeated the experiment with another group of rats, but this time, right before the rats drowned, he picked them out of the water for a moment, dried them off, and then put them back in. The result? The rats that were momentarily rescued swam approximately 240 times longer than those who were not. The reason, Richter hypothesized, was that the second group of rats had hope.
Hmmm. If having hope can make that much difference in the life of a rat, imagine what it can do for us!
According to the Oxford English Dictionary hope is “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.” It’s not some wishy-washy, pie-in the sky, unsubstantiated longing. Hope is a logical decision, usually based on some sort of possibility. In other words, hope is a choice. Your choice.
I find that really interesting, especially in light of 1 Corinthians 13.
This celebrated chapter closes with the well-known words, “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13 NIV).
Faith, hope, and love—three great virtues of the Christian life.
Think about those words for a moment and what each one means for the believer. Love is a command (John 13:34). Faith is a fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). But hope is a choice.
Do you ever have problems choosing hope? I’ve had challenges, but what ultimately got me through was the idea that I could either continue in the circumstance with hope or without hope. The choice I made wasn’t necessarily going to change the situation, but it could change me. I couldn’t control the circumstance, but I could control my response. So, I chose hope. What about you? What is it that threatens your hope and how do you make the choice to stay in hope? Share your words of wisdom.