Hope

Here's a good quote about hope. It comes from a book I just finished, "Preaching from Memory to Hope," by Thomas Long. He is emphasizing the need to talk about the future and the realization of God's complete reign, when everything will be made right. This is what we should hope for. But...

As scientist-theologian John Polkinghorne has claimed, much of what counts for hope in the current social context is "in a negative form--as a desire that certain things not occur." I hope the stock market doesn't crash, I hope I don't go into a vegetative state and die in a nursing home, I hope we don't have another 9/11. This is finally a secular hope, a hope that the party will go on forever, which Kierkegaard recognized as the despair that doesn't even know it is despairing, the "sickness unto death." Thy kingdom come, they will be done?--Oh, I hope not.

Seems pretty true to me. What about you?