The Daily: Thursday December 4, 2025

Rejoice in hope; be patient under trial; persevere in prayer.
Romans 12:12

What Hope Is Not, Part 1

This Advent, many of us are naming what we’re afraid to hope for. As we said on Sunday, fear is not failure; fear is information. And part of moving toward hope with honesty is clearing away the cheap knockoffs our culture tries to hand us. MaryAnn McKibben Dana does this beautifully in her book Hope: A User's Manual by showing us what hope is not—and why that matters when we find ourselves trembling like Zechariah in the temple.

Today, we look at four of them.

1. Hope Is Not Optimism

Optimism expects things will get better on their own. Hope believes — insists — that together we can help make the world better.
Optimism can soothe us, especially when life has usually worked out in our favor. But hope is what rises in communities pushed to the margins, even when the facts on the ground refuse to cooperate. As we said Sunday: hope does not deny reality — hope wrestles.

2. Hope Is Not Prediction

Hope is not forecasting a future we’ve already mapped out.
It’s not “things will turn out fine,” nor is it assuming the outcome. Dana reminds us that hope is often internal rather than predictive — less about knowing where the story is headed and more about cultivating resilience and imagination in the unknown.

3. Hope Is Not Charging Into the Future

Hope is not the frantic American impulse to rush ahead, to move on, to leave the past behind.
We value speed, progress, and the next thing, often before our souls are ready. But Advent teaches us to slow down, to pay attention, even to our fear. Hope faces what’s in front of us — the grief, the ache, the longing — instead of sprinting past it.

4. Hope Is Not Toxic Positivity

Hope doesn’t paper over pain with smiles or slogans.
“Toxic positivity” says, “Look on the bright side,” when what we need is someone to sit beside us in the dark. On Sunday we said: God meets us in the trembling. Hope does the same — brave presence, without platitudes.

Reflection Question

Which of these four “false hopes” (optimism, prediction, charging into the future, toxic positivity) shows up most often in your own life?
How does it shape — or limit — the way you approach fear, longing, or hope?


Prayer

Holy One,
teach us to hold joy and sorrow together,
to plant seeds without knowing the season,
to rise and act even when outcomes are unclear.
Make us prisoners of hope,
courageous in the places where we tremble.
Amen.