Hope, Our Great Motivator

Several years ago, a teacher assigned to visit children in a large city hospital received a routine call requesting that she visit a particular child. She took the boy's name and room number and was told by the teacher on the other end of the line, "We're studying nouns and adverbs in his class now. I'd be grateful if you could help him with his homework so he doesn't fall behind the others." It wasn't until the visiting teacher got outside the boy's room that she realized it was located in the hospital's burn unit. No one had prepared her for what she saw. As she entered the room, she saw a young boy horribly burned and in great pain. The vision shocked her so entirely that she wanted to turn and leave, but she felt that she couldn't just walk out, so she awkwardly stammered, "I'm the hospital teacher, and your teacher sent me to help you with nouns and adverbs." The next morning a nurse on the burn unit asked her, "What did you do to that boy?" Before she could finish a profusion of apologies, the nurse interrupted her: "You don't understand. We've been very worried about him, but ever since you were here yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He's fighting back – responding to treatment – it's as though he's decided to live." The boy later explained that he had completely given up hope until he saw that teacher. It all changed when he came to a simple realization. With joyful tears he expressed it this way: "They wouldn't send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?"

Hope – desire combined with expectation – is a powerful motivator. Hope can motivate a soldier to survive deplorable conditions in a prisoner of war camp. Hope can motivate a stroke or accident victim to push themselves to walk or talk again. Hope can motivate a young boy to believe he will live, even in the face of almost insurmountable injuries. Hope is also a powerful motivator in our spiritual life. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he pointed out how the resurrection of Jesus Christ provides hope for Christians. He wrote, "Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. . . . And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. But now Christ is risen from the dead," (1 Corinthians 15:12-19 NKJV). Because Christ arose, Christians have hope. Hope that comes from the knowledge that the grave is not the end, but only a transition until the resurrection and our eternal home with God. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews called this hope "an anchor of the soul" (Hebrews 6:19). Someone once said that it is as if we have set our anchor in heaven and cling to its line continually as we face the trials of life.

Because God cares for us (2 Peter 5:7) and will never leave nor abandon us (Hebrews 13:5), no faithful Christian should ever lose hope. In fact, as Charles Allen once said, "When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God." After all, God would not send His Son to be an ever living intercessor and advocate for a people with no hope, would He?