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Hop springs12/20/2023 ![]() Hope, as used in the New Testament, means looking toward the future with confidence. Each time it is used to describe an anticipation of future events that are certain to come. Elpis appears more than 50 times in the New Testament. What is guaranteed? That is worth repeating. Elpis is an expectation of what is guaranteed. It comes from the root word elpo, which means to anticipate (with pleasure) and to welcome. According to Strong’s Concordance, elpis means expectation, trust, and confidence. The word hope in the New Testament is from the Greek word elpis. In other words, what hope means to a disciple of Jesus Christ. While that is an important point, let’s put our focus on what hope means in the New Testament. Obviously, this is true because the Messiah was expected but had not yet come. We might hear “Oh you know, hope springs eternal” when someone buys a lottery ticket or hoping your favorite team wins the championship despite several losing seasons. Very much like those verses, people have taken Pope’s phrase and turned it into a glib cliché or shallow saying. ![]() In the same way, many use other turns of phrase they don’t realize come from the Bible, “apple of my eye” ( Deuteronomy 32:10 Psalm 17:8), “…a man after my own heart” (1Samuel 13:14 Acts 13:22). That said, I think very few people who have spoken the phrase “hope springs eternal” even realize it comes from a classic piece of literature, which serves as an affirmative poem on faith. However, in my truly uninformed opinion, Pope seemed to be arguing that while life seems pointless to one living in the middle of it, order can be found in God. Thus, I will not try to discuss the overall meaning or intention of Pope’s poem. I took American Lit in high school, and while I passed, barely, my friend Dean and I competed for who understood poetry the least. To be honest, I am probably the farthest thing from a poetic scholar or expert. The soul, uneasy, and confin’d from home, rests and expatiates in a life to come.” “Hope springs eternal in the human breast Man never Is, but always To be blest. So says a guy named Alexander Pope, in a poem he wrote entitled “An Essay on Man,” People always hope for the best, even in the face of adversity.
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