The Power of Infinite Hope through God
By Madeline Verdesca, MA
Where do you hold your hope?
It is easy at times to become discouraged when life doesn’t go the way we envisioned it. Our careful plans fall apart. Our dreams are crushed when a sudden disaster, illness, or loss knocks the wind out of us, and it’s hard to bring ourselves to get back up again. A quick look around us is enough to remind us of the darkness that is present throughout our neighborhoods, communities, and in the world. We may find ourselves losing hope for any beauty or goodness in the future.
In a drafted 1962 sermon, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote to an audience intimately familiar with the darknesses of reality that stifle hope. He wrote: “On the one hand we must accept the finite disappointment, but in spite of this we must maintain infinite hope“ (kinginstitute.stanford.edu). How did King hold onto hope in an ever-changing world where so many struggle, hurt, and fight to make it from one day to the next? He knew that hope built on finite things would not last; instead, his hope was founded in something much greater.
Some 3000 years earlier, the psalmist King David of Israel named that very same hope King referenced, singing: “I lift my eyes up to the mountains – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth“ (Psalm 121:1 [ESV]).
As these great leaders in human history both teach us, when everything else is shaken, God is unmoved. Author and philologist, J.R.R. Tolkien, had two words for “hope” in the Sindarin language he crafted: “amdir” and “estel”. “Amdir” literally means “looking up” (tolkiengateway.net) and has the connotation of “optimism” or “finite hope”. This is the word we would use to say that we “hope” the weather will be nice tomorrow, and those hopes are dashed if there are rainstorms all day. “Estel”, however, names a Hope that remains even when all is lost; perhaps this is the “infinite Hope” that Luther was talking about. “Estel” could be better defined as “faith“ (tolkiengateway.com): knowledge that whatever happens, and whenever hopes or dreams come crumbling down, we have a higher, infinite hope that God is working out everything for His good, and that we can trust in Him. We can have this kind of hope because God is with us!
Remember, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9 ESV) and “behold, I am with you, always, even to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20b ESV).
Where do we hold our Hope? Our Hope is everlasting, because we hold our Hope in God, the maker of heaven and earth. As He was with the Israelites 3 millennia ago, and with congregations of struggling, marginalized peoples only a few generations ago, He is with us now, and promises He will be with us always.
Sources:
MLK quote: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/draft-chapter-x-shattered-dreams
“Amdir”: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Amdir_(Sindarin_word)