Posted August 31, 2026
What is the difference between hope and optimism? A great deal, as it turns out, with very practical consequences for our daily lives.
A psychology professor named Kendra Thomas studies the subject. According to her research, optimism describes people who say, “In uncertain times, I usually expect the best.” But such optimism can rely on luck over action.
By contrast, she writes, “Long-term hope is not about looking on the bright side. It is a mindset that helps people endure challenges, tackle them head-on and keep their eyes on the goal.” It is a strong will to succeed along with plans to fulfill a purpose.
She reports that such hope is stronger than optimism at predicting academic success and people’s ability to cope with pain. Scientific evidence shows that hope improves individuals’ health and boosts their well-being. But it also has benefits beyond the self: “virtuous hope” strives toward a purposeful vision of the common good, a hope often shaped by hardship and strengthened through relationships.
Dr. Thomas cites Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders as courageous examples whose hope enabled them to march for justice and democracy while facing opposition and worse. For them and others who face hardship, suffering is not a suppressor of hope but the context for its growth.
As she notes, this is not a new insight. Twenty centuries ago, Paul wrote: “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame” (Romans 5:3–5a).
If you got up this morning worried that there isn’t enough to worry about, worry no more:
What these problems have in common is the fact that there is so little you and I can do to solve them. We cannot reverse time in Nepal or Arizona, stop Iranian aggression, solve the geopolitics behind the fertilizer crisis, or prevent video game releases.
Accordingly, we can be pessimists regarding the future, remembering that “a pessimist is never disappointed.” We can be optimists, believing that things will get better and “hoping for the best.” Or we can place our hope not in hope but in Christ.
Paul’s statement quoted above continues: “. . . because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5b). The apostle explains: “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (v. 6). As a result, “we have now received reconciliation” with God (v. 11) and have “eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (v. 21).
But here’s a fact about eternal life that many people miss: we already have it. The moment we turn to Christ in faith, we “have eternal life” (John 3:16). We do not receive this gift when we die, but when we are “born of the Spirit” (v. 7). In that moment, “the whole fullness of deity,” the One who is “the head of all rule and authority,” comes to dwell in us by his Spirit (Colossians 2:9; 1 Corinthians 3:16).
When we ask and trust him to redeem all he allows and then serve him in the midst of our suffering, we discover that “our sufficiency is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5).
The key is embracing what my youth minister taught me decades ago: Always remember the source of your personal worth.
John Newton is known to us as the author of the world’s most famous hymn, Amazing Grace. But he said of himself as a young man, “[I was] a ringleader in blasphemy and wickedness. . . . I had the ambition of a Caesar or an Alexander, and wanted to rank in wickedness among the foremost of the human race.” A slave ship captain, he transported approximately 468 enslaved African men, women, and children across the Atlantic.
After experiencing a religious conversion, he eventually abandoned and opposed slavery. One of William Wilberforce’s most significant mentors, Newton published a pamphlet detailing the horrors of the practice that was instrumental in Wilberforce’s eventual success in ending slavery in England.
Some years ago, I was privileged to visit St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church in Olney, stand behind Newton’s pulpit, and reflect on his legacy. He said of himself, “I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.”
As Newton testified,
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
You’ve sung his words many times. Today, let’s choose to believe them.
“Hope is patience with the lamp lit.” —Tertullian (AD 155–220)
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