There is a basis for hope

It's easy to become so engulfed by the news that all one is left with is despair. Yet despair can be dissolved. Through divine inspiration, one can find solid reason for confidence and peace.

Music, poetry, and many other forms of art, of course, can bring light and encouragement. But above all, it is the growing understanding of God found through studying the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,m the two textbooks of Christian Science, that brings deep-rooted, illuminating hope.

Hope becomes a vital, impelling quality when it is based on faith and understanding. True hope is not vague and wavering, but God-derived and permanent. However, hope requires consecration, effort, and prayer in order to be of value.

Real hope has nothing to do with the rather flabby feeling behind such comments as "Oh, I hope it will be all right." The Bible shows that hope flows from the omnipotence of God. The Psalms state on several occasions, "Hope thou in God" and "I hope in thy word." A sense of heaviness and helpless responsibility for what appears so evil in the world is lifted by realizing the incontrovertible fact of God's presence and control.

The more one finds out about God, the stronger becomes the basis for hope. The Bible reveals that God is Spirit. Therefore His creation, the only creation , is spiritual and by its very nature, good. When one prays from this viewpoint , the penetrating light of Truth illumines thought, building and lifting it to a constructive, healing level. The world needs firm, positive hope, based foursquare on God, who is unchanging Principle.

Evil of any kind is a lie about God, having no place in His spiritual universe. Christ Jesus denounced evil and demonstrated his understanding of God's spiritual nature by nullifying the lie in whatever form it took -- sickness, death, hate. Mary Baker Eddy, the author of Science and Health,m writes, "The nature of christianity is peaceful and blessed, but in order to enter into the kingdom, the anchor of hope must be cast beyond the veil of matter into the Shekinah into which Jesus has passed before us; . . ." and "Like our Master, we must depart from material sense into the spiritual sense of being." n1

n1 Science and Healthm , pp. 40-41.

When the foundation and source of hope is an understanding of God, hope is strong and buoyant. It brings the conviction that the nature of man -- and that means the true nature of everyone -- is spiritual and perfect, expressing all good. This gives grounds for solid, constructive expectation of good, which can never be confused with mere wishful thinking

Jeremiah has given this great promise to us all: "Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit." n2

n2 Jeremiah 17:7, 8.

It might take persistent striving to reach them, but the rewards of real hope include joy that can't be whittled away by unhappy events, and a deep love for mankind. There is no situation that cannot be healed through God's power. It will take time to prove this fact in its entirety; but meanwhile spiritual hope, based on an increasing understanding of God and willingness to work for Him, will help us realize that God's power is here to solve human problems now. ,%DAILY BIBLE VERSE Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God: which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever: which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food for the hungry. The Lord looseth the prisoners. Psalms 146:5-7