“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.” So says ‘Red’ to his friend Andy Dufresne, an innocent man sentenced to life in the Shawshank State Penitentiary. But hope doesn’t drive Andy insane, rather it sustains him through 19 years of imprisonment until he manages to engineer his escape. To keep hope alive for that length of time is indeed a remarkable thing and ‘Red’ has seen enough to know the truth of his own opinion.
The Bible agrees, the writer of the Book of Proverbs observing, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Hope then has the capacity to either make our heart sing with joy, or sick with despair, and the difference between the two is the certainty with which we hold the hope that we long for.
The Bible has plenty to say about hope that does not disappoint, and points to the resurrection of Jesus as the source of confidence. The Apostle Peter for one, wrote in a letter to friends suffering terrible persecution, “Through [Jesus] you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.” The community of the church is built on this hope and it does not disappoint.
