Just a quick note here to celebrate a little epiphany I had through the simple wonders of the dictionary!

In our lesson on faith a couple of weeks ago, we included “hope” as one of five things inextricably linked with faith.  But, as I admitted to the class, I didn’t really understand that very well because I frequently associate “hope” with things whose outcomes I question and fear.  I hope, for example, that I won’t get sick following a couple of nights of inadequate sleep—but I fear that I will. Or I hope that my Mariners won’t give up the tying run in the 8^th inning while I type this—but I fear that they will.

How can hope, with all its inherent risks and worries of failure be a component of faith, when faith includes confidence?  Well.  Turns out I don’t even know what the word hope means.

I Googled “definition: hope.”  Up came three definitions (in maybe seven nanoseconds—eight max):

1. A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.

2. A feeling of trust.

3. Want something to happen or be the case.

There’s nothing in there about doubt and fear of failure!  Then I thought, “I wonder what the word ‘hope’ meant during Joseph Smith’s time.”  Of course, Google puts Webster’s 1828 dictionary at our fingertips at the speed of thought.  Webster gives two definitions, the first of which includes this helpful explanation as if it were written just for me:

“Hope differs from wish and desire in this, that it implies some expectation of obtaining the good desired, or the possibility of possessing it. Hope therefore always gives pleasure or joy; whereas wish and desire may produce or be accompanied with pain and anxiety.”

His second definition says hope is, “confidence in a future event; the highest degree of well-founded expectation of good; as a hope founded on God’s gracious promises; a scriptural sense.”

So there you go.  Or at least, there I go.  Hope involves expectation, confidence, wanting something to happen and joy.  It is not accompanied by pain and anxiety, two constant conditions of Mariners fans—and two conditions which should not be constants for believing, faithful members of the Church.

Hope and faith are perfectly compatible.