Iremember the day my hope failed.
The seminary where I taught in South Africa had run out of money. Facing impending closure, faculty and students packed into a classroom to pray. These people had saved and sacrificed for years to arrive here from across the continent. Some had survived war, famine, drought, or dictatorship. As I listened to their voices crying to the Lord, suddenly I ran out of words. I realized, These people have a way of hoping that I have never learned.
Since then, I’ve come to think about hope in terms of quality more than quantity. That’s not because the numbers look great here in the American church: According to a recent Pew Research Center study, less than half of religiously affiliated US adults (47 percent) felt hopeful in their past week. That’s 12 percentage points higher than atheists, but it’s still a lot of hopelessness.
