There's an Irish proverb that states: "Hope is the physician of each misery.” Hope can bring us through the darkest storms of life so it truly can heal our miseries along with the atonement of Jesus Christ. This Irish proverb also brought to my mind, several circumstances in which hope proved to be the perfect physician needed.
The first instance is from the Bible regarding a man named Job. Now one might think that his story is one of endurance rather than one of hope. I would counter that it is impossible for one to endure without hope.
Job was a righteous man. He kept the commandments, he loved and worshipped God. This really bothered Satan, as he desires all men to be miserable like unto himself (see 2 Nephi 2:27). Satan wanted to see how faithful to God Job would really be when times were rough, for it is our trails that show our true character. God allowed Satan to test Job because He knew that Job could handle it. For God does not allow us to be tempted above what we are capable of handling (see 1 Corinthians 10:13). And so Job had a Murphy's Law moment of life, when everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. All of his property was destroyed and his whole family was killed. He gets terrible boils and even his friends desert him. Yet through it all, he never forsook God or was angry with him. He had moments of sorrow where he really struggled, who wouldn't? However, he kept his faith in Christ and said of Christ: "he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." (Job 23:10). And as he continued to have hope, he saw himself come forth so much stronger "as gold" and received even more than he had to start with, all because of his never-failing hope in Christ (for full account see Job).
The next example that came to mind is that of the recently deceased Nelson Mandela, a great leader in the civil rights movement in South Africa. For those of you less familiar with this amazing man, here's a brief background from a letter my father wrote me:
"[Nelson Mandela] was put in prison for 27 years due to the fact that he fought against apartheid, [a segregated political system], in his country. He became a world-wide symbol of what was wrong in that country in the name of apartheid and a man willing to stand up for what he believed in. More than once he was offered freedom by the government if he would denounce his fighting against apartheid...he refused because he felt so strongly against it. Four years after he was released from prison, he was elected President of South Africa. During the inauguration, some of his invited guests were his jailers." My father then proceeded to share with me a true story regarding Nelson Mandela as told by former US president, Bill Clinton:"That was pretty smart of you to have your jailers come to the inauguration and all of that, but let me ask you something...didn't you really hate them for what they did?"
Nelson replied...
"Oh, yeah, I hated them for a long time. I stayed alive on hate for 12 years. I broke rocks every day, and I stayed alive on hate. They took a lot away from me. They took me away from my wife, and it subsequently destroyed my marriage. They took me away from seeing my children grow up. They abused me mentally and physically. And one day, I realized that they could take it all except my mind and my heart."
He paused and then continued...
"Those things I would have to give to them, and I simply decided not to give them away."
And so I said to Nelson...
"Well, what about when you were getting out of prison? The day you got out of prison in 1990. It was a Sunday morning, and I got my daughter up early in the morning, and I took her down to the kitchen, and I turned on the television, and she was just a little girl then, and I sat her up on the kitchen counter. And I said 'Chelsea, I want you to watch this. This is one of the most important things you'll ever see in your life.'
"I watched you walk down that dirt road to freedom. Now, when you were walking down there, and you realized how long you had been in their prison, didn't you hate them then? Didn't you feel some hatred?"
Nelson replied...
"Yes, I did a little bit, I felt that. And frankly, I was kind of afraid too, because I hadn't been free in so long. As I felt the anger rising up, I thought to myself, 'Nelson. They have already had you for 27 years. And if you keep hating them, they'll have you again.' And I said to myself: 'I want to be free.'
"And so I let it go. I let it go."
When first reading this story my father shared with me, I considered it to be merely about forgiveness. However when I read and reflected on it again, I found that it is also very much about hope. No person can spend 27 years in prison and still have a positive outlook on life without holding fast to hope every day of that 27 years. It is this bright hope which Nelson Mandela chose to cling to instead of hate. Some might say that he hoped for freedom. I would say that his hope was his freedom. It allowed him to keep what his jailers could not take and as such found freedom emotionally and spiritually and, then much later, physical freedom followed.
As the author of Proverbs states, "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life." (Proverbs13:12). Or in other words, when you don't have hope, you are spiritually crippling yourself, but when hope is rooted inside of you, it is the source of much strength and growth. This was true for Job, this was true for Nelson Mandela, this is true for me, and it is true for you my dear readers.
There was a time in my life when I let go of hope. There were many things in my life that were going wrong and I chose to focus on them. As I did so, my hope was rapidly diminishing and I was making my heart
sick. As I abandoned hope, I began abandoning other things as well. I abandoned sociability, I abandoned praying, I abandoned studying the scriptures. I was abandoning light and sinking into darkness. The world seemed to be caving in on me and I saw no end to the state I was in.
A friend who is dear and near to my heart reached out to me in this period of crisis and urged me to find hope and strength to carry on by going straight to the source and asking for it. This dear friend implored that I get on my knees and open my scriptures and that through doing these things I would find what I so desperately needed. This friend invited me to cease my acceptance of darkness and seek once more for light. I heeded their advice and and prayed to my Father in Heaven, asking for the hope and strength to make it through another day. As I repeated this process each day, and once again started to once again to study the scriptures, I noticed a gradual increase of light in my life. No matter where I was reading in the scriptures, there we're continually verses of comfort, hope and strength. I recognized this as my Heavenly Father answering my prayers and feeding hope to my troubled soul.
"ye must needs be in despair" (Moroni 10:22). So choose to "hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God." (Ether 12:4)
