The Accountant-May-June 2017

INSPIRATION
don’t always come true.
This is not the kind of hope we have
in God. Our hope in God is unlike any
we’ve ever had, and that is because there
is a moment in history that sets this hope
apart from any other. Peter writes, “…
he has caused us to be born again to a
living hope through the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead…” The tomb
could not hold the living, breathing,
scarred, but victorious body of our Jesus.
The man who claimed to be God, who
committed no sin (2:22), and who died
before hostile crowds, appeared again,
just days later, before crowds bearing the
wounds of the cross, but demonstrating a
power and victory over it. He is alive. And
here in verse 3, Peter connects this life, the
God-man’s life after death, witnessed by
hundreds, celebrated at Easter, with your
hope. Believer, if Jesus lives, you will live;
God established and secured your hope
when he raised his Son. Therefore, your
hope is as alive as Jesus…asserts Segal in
this fascinating piece.
Meanwhile, writing about how to
create a more hopeful life in life hack,
Maria Hill says hope is our emotional
engine, the basis for engaging with life.
In a spellbinding feature, Hill says hope is
directly related to our sense of possibility;
the greater our perception of possibilities,
the greater our hope.
How do we experience hope?
Hope is what we feel when we think
that life is worth living, that our work is
worth doing. Hope is what we have when
we have a positive relationship with our
existence. It is the deepest of the three
emotions. Happiness and optimism
cannot exist without hope, but hope can
exist without happiness or optimism.
Hope is our energy, our fuel for living, so
people will go to great lengths to create it
and protect it. Without it you lack energy
to engage with life. Hope is so essential
that a negative childhood can reduce
the brain’s ability to create dopamine
which may lead to addiction because
drugs increase dopamine levels in people
who do not have the ability to create it
naturally. Hope has to be real. It has to be
based on something tangible. We can fake
optimism and pretend to be happy but
deep down inside, we know whether or not
we have hope. We cannot really be fooled.
When we are sizing up our hopes we are
essentially taking an existential account of
where we are. It is an assessment of our
ability to survive now and into the future.
Our assessment tells us where to put our
energies and our time.
Hope recognizes our interdependency
with our families, culture, society and our
environment. So a genius in a war torn
country probably is less hopeful than an
average person in a peaceful place. When
hope is damaged it affects more than one
person. When real hope is denied it is hard
to replace. When a person has lost hope it
can be hard to find motivation again. The
most important impact we have on each
other is through how we affect each other’s
hopes. Hope breeds hope.
When hope exists we engage with
our environment more. We give more of
ourselves to what we do – as does everyone
else around us. Hope engages our creativity
and our problem solving skills. It gets its
hands dirty in the business of creating our
lives. It values all of the details, skills and
challenges that go into creating our world.
Hope is grounded in present reality. It
is our link to each other, the past and the
future. It enables us to respect the efforts
of our ancestors even as we decide not to
repeat their mistakes. It respects the needs
of other living creatures and future needs
as well. It is the “something larger than
ourselves” that we are all a part of. Living a
hopeful life is to recognize that everything
and everyone matters. That includes you
since you are part of the hopefulness in
the world. Taking care of yourself matters.
The quality of the work you do matters. It
matters how you are treated and how you
treat others.
In order to be an effective part of a
hopeful world there are certain things that
you need to do regularly: conduct a hope
audit of your life, care for your health, have
a stress reduction strategy, create hopeful
relationships. Learn to forgive. Develop
a daily journal writing habit if it helps
you to let go of negative experiences and
emotions. Help others see the best in
themselves, being in Hope with Others
God established and secured your hope
when he raised his Son. Therefore, your
hope is as alive as Jesus…asserts Segal
MAY - JUNE 2017 47