WHAT DOES HOPE LOOK LIKE?

A pretty telling question when you think beyond the superficial. Not the “I hope I can go to the Gold Coast for my holidays this year,” or “I hope I get an ipod for Christmas,” but the sort of hope which brings about real transformation.

Just at the end of Day 3 of Fusion’s annual conference, the Christian youth and community organization I’ve worked with for almost 41 years, and hope is what has been foremost in our thinking. “Together with Hope” is integral to our values, both in our life together as a movement and in our responses to the communities right around the world in which we work.

Watching the reports from around the country and around the world from places which seem to have so little hope, it’s amazing how investing our lives into those of others can bring about transformation, not only at a personal level, but at a community level as well.

I don’t work amongst the townships in South Africa where even now houses look like barbed wire fortresses because of the level of crime within the community, but some of our workers do. Apartheid may be over, but there are those with long histories of trauma and tragedy from that era, so to live and work amongst the locals in such a way that we share their love for their people and their desire to see a different future for their nation is in whatever measure a way of instilling hope.

The hopes of an abused teenager will be quite different from the one who lives within a safe, loving family. Those of a single mum raising three kids on a pension will be different from those of the single woman comfortable and fulfilled in her career. The hopes of an asylum seeker will be vastly different from those of someone who has never experienced the fear and terror of war right on their doorstep, and those of a ten year old will be markedly different from a seventy year old.

But what do they all have in common? Hope brings with it an expectation, that something is going to change, that the circumstances of the present can somehow be different. Negotiating the path to that point is not always clear. For me, I think hope means having the freedom to take a risk, but I’m not good at that. I want the adventure, but I also want the safety net.

It’s one thing to have hopes and dreams for myself, but how important is it to me to bring hope to others? It’s one thing to say I care about other people, but do I care about them enough that I’m willing to invest my life into theirs so they can get a glimpse of what hope is, and in so doing see the potential within themselves and the ripple effect it can have on those around them who are also struggling.

That’s the real question. Bit confronting for me that’s for sure.