The author Norman Cousins said that human beings can live for a few weeks without food, a few days without water, a few minutes without air, but not one second without hope. I think he was right! We all need hope. A hopeless existence just doesn’t seem worth living. All of us instinctively know this, so we spend our days scouring for hope. Sometimes, however, we settle for something else. In a desire to feel good about where we’re headed, we mistake positive thinking for genuine hope.

Positive thinking is good, just not good enough. While it beats negative thinking, nobody can hang a future on it. You can repeat sunny maxims, look for the bright side, and search for silver linings. But if that sums up your battle plans, you’ll be staring into oblivion the moment the black clouds roll in.

Positive thinking wields too little power over the greatest forces that confront us. While positive thinking can put us in the right frame of mind to tackle our problems, it can’t ultimately do much about the problems themselves. For that we need hope – solid, biblical, divinely revealed hope. As Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me.” Hope says we can endure through our struggles, and hope in the Lord says we will find relief either in this world or in eternity. Isn’t that a glorious hope worth sharing with the world?  

This is Luis Palau.