Our Wild Hope

During the past week, I’ve been in so many tearful conversations—with friends, family, acquaintances at the gym, and neighbors. It can be sobering to reflect on the past year and still ache for that one blessing the year didn’t bring. And as we look ahead, it can feel daunting to summon faith for an uncertain future.

January is hard. The days are dark, the calendar is empty, and the feasts and celebrations of December have been replaced with diet plans and bills to settle. I remember President Hinckley once saying, “If I live through another January, I’ll make it through the rest of the year.” He wasn’t promising triumph—he was promoting survival! So why do so many of us think January is the perfect time to pull out a lengthy list of resolutions?

I’m all for setting good goals, but there’s no rule that says you have to start in January. This is the time to wrap yourself in a warm blanket, go to bed earlier, and take better care of yourself than you did during the frenzy of the holidays.

I often ponder C.S. Lewis’s words: “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”  How often do we cling to the idea that all the best moments are behind us—in the sun-dappled days of childhood or the vibrant strength of youth? Yet, for those who trust in a loving God, the future holds more joy than we can begin to imagine.

These words became especially poignant to me when my mother was on her deathbed. Over and over, she promised, “We have so much happiness ahead of us.” Those might seem like strange words from someone about to die. But she didn’t say, “You have so much happiness ahead.” She said, “We.”

When I look back over those fifteen-plus years, we’ve experienced so much happiness– family dinners filled with laughter, weddings, babies, roses in the garden. She was right. Happiness has continued to unfold, just as she promised.

Dr. Andrew Teal reminds us to trust in our wild hope: “that every person living, every person that has ever lived, and everyone who will ever be, has a destiny to be loved and blessed by God beyond our imagining.”

What if this January, instead of worrying about what might go wrong, you chose to believe everything is working out for you? What if you decided God is watching over you, blessing you, and caring for you in ways you can’t yet see?

Maybe this is the year to stop striving and start trusting. What if everything you need is already right in front of you?

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”
—Isaiah 41:10