What to Do When All Hope Is Gone

By Ramlit Navarro

Hope is said to spring eternal. But sometimes it seems to come to an end, an end in despair. In moments of pain and affliction, inner strength sometimes turns into inner weakness. Optimism loses its alleviating effect. Strong determination and perseverance fail. Everything becomes ambiguous. The future is bleak. You cry all your heart out and shout from the depths of your soul trying to exhaust your interior arsenal to find reasons to hope for. You hope for the better and things just get worse. You hope and hope and nothing happens. And so, you feel afraid, angry, remorseful, desolate, resigned and yes, hopeless. Hope is useless, you thought. Now that hoping seems to be over, what next? Have you thought of ending your life? You may have all the reasons to do it and think it makes sense at the moment but do not do it. Do not do it at least for hope´s sake. So, when all hope is gone, what to do? Do hope!

This may sound nonsense and ridiculous at the moment but just keep on reading because all the words written here are meant. They are meant for you. They are meant in moments of hopelessness.

Real hope is born out of despair. No one knows what it means to be hopeful unless they know what it means to be hopeless. It is in moments of abandon, failure, loss, sorrow, absurdity, brokenness and senselessness that authentic hope comes to be. You know hope precisely because you know what it means to be hopeless and helpless. Hope is hope because all hope is gone. Does this sound even weirder? What is hope then?

In the experience of biblical characters like Abraham, Moses and Jesus, hope is essentially a hope in God. In their moments of confusion and ambiguity, when their human force and comprehension failed and when nothing else seemed to be of help, God would make things happen. God would find ways when there seemed to be no way. At times there was nothing but only God´s felt absence. Yet they hoped and hoped. They let go and let God take over. For them, in God alone is hope no matter how meaningless hoping seemed to be.

Because of God´s unchanging faithfulness, hope can only be in the One who fulfills promises no matter what. Hope in no one and nothing else but God. You may lose trust in yourself, in the people who ought to love you unconditionally and in things that give security and comfort because everything and everyone else is subject to change. What once was may no longer be. You can rely on them up to a certain extent but do not hope in all that is fleeting. Humbly ask help if you can find any around. Others might have already fallen into the rock bottom and gone through the same sojourn you are into. They have wisdom and compassion, we hope so. The truth is: changes happen and can sometimes be painfully excruciating when you have no one and nothing else to cling to -- all hope is gone. When these happen, know then that you are being led to give in and give up to the unchanging source of hope. God always fulfills promises because God is faithful to His beloved ones.

Now, what if God does not fulfill His promises? Your hope runs dry because of God´s seeming indifference and forgetfulness. Still, do hope in God. You do not hope in the promises of God but in the God of promises.

Ramlit Navarro is a Brazil-based author who writes about a variety of topics ranging from spirituality, psychology, religion, philanthropy, social issues to internet marketing, non-profit organizations, fund raising, tourism etc.
The author has written well-read articles at http://hopemessenger-wordworld.blogspot.com/

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