In Sacrament Meeting yesterday, my bishop spoke about hope and the way in which many of us feel or express hope in Christ, as being without real hope. A hopeless hope. Not a faithful hope which trusts that all the trials we may face are ultimately for our benefit (see Doctrine & Covenants 122:7). Too often our hope is similar to a wish for something we're not certain we'll receive, such as when we say, "I hope we'll have good weather tomorrow." There's nothing you can do about the outcome of such a wish and so we fall short of true hope. Our hope is vain (see Moroni 7:40-44) when it should be strong - we are counselled to "ask in faith, nothing wavering" (see James 1:5-6).
So how do we learn to hope with a trusting heart? For me, I'm learning that there are two ways - and that they go hand-in-hand. First and foremost is to do your best to keep the commandments of God and follow the example of Jesus Christ. Which leads naturally to the second: to serve others. These two actions were nicely summed up on a bumper sticker I saw the other day: "Love God, Love Others."
When we begin to look at the world around us and do what we can to make it a better place and ourselves more caring people, when we have faith that Jesus Christ will make up the difference between His perfection and our shortcomings - and we all have them - that is when we will begin to understand what it means to have "a perfect brightness of hope" (see 2 Nephi 31:20).
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