“And again, my beloved brethren, I would speak unto you concerning hope. How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope?” (Moroni 7:40)
Faith without hope is incomplete. Repentance without hope is incomplete. Life without hope is a life filled with despair. And that, my dear friends, is not the purpose of our creation. Men, in the complete sense of men and women, “are that they might have joy.” (2 Nephi 2:25)
In a talk called “Hope, an Anchor of the Soul,” President James E. Faust spoke of hope and the power it holds in our lives and eternities.
“Hope is the anchor of our souls. , “Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God.” (James E. Faust, “Hope, an Anchor of the Soul,” Ensign, Nov 1999, 59)
As mentioned before, that which is good is of God, that which is not is of the devil. Hope is good and is critical to life, ever aspect of it. There’s no question each of suffers trial and tragedy in our lives. When I hear someone say, “I’ve lived a charmed life. Nothing has ever gone wrong.” All I can think to myself is . . . did you recognize the trials when they came?
That’s the key. How do we approach trials? How do we approach tragedy? With broken hearts, eyes swamped with tears, and spirits drooping? Or do we shake it off and ask ourselves, what do I do now? Sometimes the only answer is to lean 100% on the Lord. That’s a very hard thing to do, sometimes.
Two years ago my husband was in the hospital and dying. He was hemorrhaging so much blood they were unable to pump it in, via his fistula, faster than he was bleeding out. Doctors and nurses were racing in and out of his room, shouting orders as they attempted to stabilize him and cauterize the ulcer which had perforated an ulcer. I stood to the side, absolutely paralyzed.
Let met interject something at this point, I’m a fixer. That’s what I do. I see a problem, doesn’t matter what it is, I find a way to fix it. Confiding a problem to me is risky if you don’t actually want a solution. Sometimes it’s a boon, sometimes it’s the bane of my existence, or it is of the poor person confiding in me. I can recall only one or two times in my life when I looked back at one of my friends or family members and said, “I got nothin’.” One friend laughed and said, “Well that must be a record.”
So picture me, standing there, watching my husband bleeding to death in a frenetic way. Blood was pouring from every orifice, not pouring, jettisoning . . . and there was nothing I could do. My husband’s life was in the hands of the medical staff frantically trying to save his life.
Inside I began to fracture. My emotions, my control, my strength simply disintegrated and I was literally paralyzed by my inability to help my husband.
At that moment in time I had two choices, to have a complete and total breakdown (and don’t think I didn’t contemplate it,) or I could lean on the Lord. I chose to lean on the Lord. I turned to my husband’s brother and his friend (also our cardiologist) and another friend, who slipped into the ICU room before they wheeled him to surgery and gave him a blessing. And, what did I do? I prayed, even pleaded, for untold amounts of the strength I knew I needed to survive the upcoming days.
My husband went into surgery at 8:00 p.m. and was wheeled back into his ICU room at 2:30 in the morning. The levels of despair I began to slip to during that six hours was deep, but the Spirit was there constantly pulling me back up. Friends and family flocked to the hospital and we prayed, laughed and cried together. Through that time of the surgery and my husband’s recovery (six days in a drug induced coma,) it seemed as if there was never a time when the Spirit of the Lord was not with me, reminding me that my husband was not being taken from me. While Alvin fought to surface from a gray netherworld between waking and sleep for forty-eight hours, the Spirit had to whisper that constantly in my ear so that I would believe. I believed.
I’m not going to pretend I didn’t make several trips to the hospital bathrooms and break down crying. I did. I’m human. But the point I am trying to make is hope is an incredible blessing given to us by our Father in Heaven.
There is always hope.
“The unfailing source of our hope is that we are sons and daughters of God and that His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, saved us from death. How can we know that Jesus truly is our Savior and Redeemer? In human terms His reality is almost undefinable, but His presence can be known unequivocally by the Spirit if we continually seek to live under the shadow of His influence. In the Book of Mormon we read the account of Aaron expounding the gospel to Lamoni’s father. He told him, “If thou wilt bow down before God … and call on his name in faith, believing that ye shall receive, then shalt thou receive the hope which thou desirest.” (Alma 22:16) The old king followed this to the letter and received a witness of the truth that Aaron had imparted. As a result, he and all his household were converted and came to know the Lord.
Our greatest hope comes from the knowledge that the Savior broke the bands of death. His victory came through His excruciating pain, suffering, and agony. He atoned for our sins if we repent. In the Garden of Gethsemane came the anguished cry, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Matthew 26:39) Luke described the intensity of the agony: “And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground.” (Luke 22:44)
If we truly understand that this life is but a brief moment in our eternities, hope is very easy to recognize and hold onto with everything in us. Remember to always see the Lord’s hand in all things. Remember that He knows every single strand of hair on your head. He knows your hopes, thoughts and desires and wishes for you to remember how deeply and irrevocably He loves you. There is always hope, my friends. Always hope.
