Not an Easy Start for the H-O-P-E Handle

Contributing Writer: Aaron Hedges, Inheritance of Hope Technology & Talent Director 

The ‘H’ in “hope” is for hard times.  How’s that for a start – maybe not what you were expecting?

“Hope” is often misused in a wishful thinking, vaguely optimistic kind of way.  “I hope the weather is nice,” for example, or “here’s hoping that our team wins,” or even “I hope things go well for our family.”  That’s a very cheap sort of hope, if it’s even hope at all. 

True hope does not ignore or run from the hard times, does not merely wish that everything was “a bed of roses.”  In fact, it is precisely the hard times that can give rise to true hope by making clear that something better must be out there.  We cannot pretend that “it’s all good” when young parents are sick!  Hard realities like this force us to either 1) resign to hopelessness, or 2) seek a source of hope.

This is not just abstract theory.  Inheritance of Hope exists because Deric and Kristen Milligan (Inheritance of Hope Co-Founders) sought hope for their hard times and the hard times of many families facing a parent’s terminal illness.

As strong as our co-founders example is, we have an even better example of digging in to hard times in Jesus Christ.  This is summed up in the beautiful lines of John chapter 1, especially verse 14 – “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” A contemporary paraphrase of scripture called The Message says it like this: “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood,” our neighborhood.

This is why we celebrate Christmas.  God did not avoid the hard times of humanity but chose – chose! – to enter them directly and personally in Jesus.  Consider this – before Jesus was even born, he was under a death threat from the king of his land.  There is no record that he had his dad around after he was 12 years old.  His adult life was filled with poverty, instability, and opposition.  When he was just in his early 30s, he was publicly tortured and killed. 

In Jesus, God has been in the hard times, all the way to the experience of death.  This means that we can find God in hard times, even death.  So ‘H,’ for hard times, forms the beginning of our handle on H-O-P-E.