Hope, the kind the Bible talks about, is not optimism.

Don’t get me wrong. I love optimists. They tend to live longer than pessimists, accomplish more, and are just a lot more fun to be around. A pessimist can hardly wait for the future so they can look back with regret. Optimists can hardly wait for the future because they just know it’s going to be better than today.

A student was seen pedaling a bicycle around his college campus. He was wearing a T-shirt that read, “Studying to be a doctor.” On the back of his bicycle was a tag that read, “Studying to be a Mercedes.” Optimists handle failure and frustration better than pessimists. For all their similarities, though, hope and optimism are entirely different emotions. Optimists think they or others can. Those with hope know God will.
 Optimists survey the circumstances and find the positive. They see the glass half-full. They see a flat tire and say, “Yeah, but it’s only flat on the bottom.”
Hope, on the other hand, doesn’t take its cue from circumstances.

In fact, there’s some odd math involved with hope: The greater the pain, the more desperate the circumstance—the stronger, more confident hope becomes. Paul talks about that in Romans 5:5: “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Did you notice the reason hope doesn’t disappoint? “Because God.” This is exactly why Jeremiah was able to find hope in his dismal circumstances back in Lamentations 3:21:
”Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.” What did he call to mind? “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed.”

Jeremiah’s confidence in the future had nothing to do with optimism. If you were to rank the characters of the Bible in order of their positive spirit and optimistic outlook, Jeremiah would be dead last. He was, by far, the most pessimistic prophet to ever bend Israel’s ear. In fact, he’s called the weeping prophet. When your hope is in what God can do, you aren’t just wishing.

Hope for the future is based on the experience of the past. This’s why memory is so important to hope. By reaching into the past we find assurances that the future will not be destroyed by the present. That’s how we kindle hope. That’s how we overcome despair. We remember what God has done in the past. We’re honest about the problems of the present. But we’re hopeful about the promise of the future, because our hope is in God. Hope grows out of memory. Hebrews 6:19 says “But we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” —submitted by Evangelist Calvin Wyatt, Reflections Ministry