Hope As Holy Resistance

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.” —Václav Havel

There was a season when I nearly lost hope.

It came quietly—less like an explosion, more like a slow leak. Each day, the air of expectation seeped out of my soul. Ministry felt heavy, progress elusive. The prayers I’d once prayed with confidence now felt like they hit a ceiling and fell back to the floor.

The congregation I was serving had all kinds of ideas about what I should be doing to grow the church, attract young families, increase giving, and the like.  Almost all of those ideas were ones they had tried and failed to do in the past.  

And any ideas I had were summarily dismissed by half of the lay leadership, who honestly wanted nothing to change.  

One evening, after another discouraging meeting, I went to sit alone in the sanctuary. The lights were off, the stained glass dimmed by the night sky.  I got up from the pew I was sitting on, and lay down in front of the chancel, my face in the carpet.  

“God, I don’t know what to do anymore.” I prayed.  “Please release me from this ministry, I don’t think I can do this another day.”  I wept into that carpet, crying out for something, anything to change.  

In that silence, a strange comfort settled in. It wasn’t resolution or rescue—just presence. I didn’t feel hope so much as I felt held. And maybe that’s where real hope begins: not with brightness, but with being seen in the dark.

In that moment, I learned that there is a huge difference between hope and optimism.  

Optimism assumes things will get better. Hope believes that—even if they don’t—God is still good. It is not blind positivity or naïve denial; it is an act of holy defiance in the face of despair. Hope is what happens when faith keeps showing up after the evidence runs out.

In dark and uncertain times, hope feels fragile, even foolish. We scroll through endless stories of violence, division, and loss, and wonder how to keep believing that love still has the final word. 

But throughout Scripture, hope has always been the language of those living under pressure. The prophets spoke of hope while in exile. The psalmists sang of hope from the depths. And the early church held hope as their anchor while living under persecution.

Hope is not pretending everything is fine. It’s daring to believe that everything can be redeemed. It’s the seed we plant, even when we may never see the harvest. It’s the small candle we light that no amount of darkness can extinguish. 

The Apostle Paul calls God “the God of hope,” praying that we would be filled “with all joy and peace in believing, so that [we] may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13) Hope is not manufactured—it’s gifted, sustained by the Spirit who whispers, “Keep going.”

To hope is to resist the temptation to give up, to grow cynical, or to surrender to fear. Hope is not passive; it propels us to act—to work for justice, to forgive, to love our enemies, to build communities of mercy in a weary world. Hope is a choice to live as though God’s promises are already unfolding in us and around us.

To hope is to refuse to surrender the future to fear.

Maybe you’re standing in a season where hope feels beyond your reach. If so, hold on to this: even the smallest flicker of faith can light the way through the longest night. Hope doesn’t deny the darkness—it declares that the dawn is already on its way.

Prayer

God of hope,
when the world feels heavy and my heart grows weary,
remind me that You are still at work, unseen but unstoppable.
Fill me with the quiet courage to believe that love will have the last word.
Let my hope be a light that refuses to go out,
a witness that You are making all things new.
Amen.

Reflection Questions

1. Where in your life does hope feel hardest to hold right now?

2. What practices help you resist cynicism and stay rooted in faith?

3. How can your hope become an act of love and resistance in the world around you?