When I was a child I can remember on Sunday nights I would hear a familiar theme song. "When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you." This was the beginning of The Wonderful World of Disney. Most Sunday nights in the summertime, the show would begin with this song. Then one of the Disney executives would come out and say a little something about the movie they were about to show. Then, each week a different movie would light up the television screen.

I admit that I don’t have very strong memories of any of the movies I saw during that program. I’m pretty sure I didn’t stay awake for most of them. But that theme song can get stuck in my head in a heartbeat. It has taken on a life of it’s own since Jiminy Cricket sang it in Pinocchio. Wishing is a common theme in Disney’s movies. Princesses wish to meet a prince. Paupers wish to be made kings. Puppets wish to become real flesh and blood.

In a Disney movie we can be pretty confident about how it will all turn out in the end. The wishes will be granted, but maybe not in the way the wishers expected. But in the end we know they will all live happily ever after.

There are some similarities between wishing and hoping. They both are actions or emotions that look forward to the future. But there are some key difference between wishing and hoping too.

Hope is not tossing a desire up to the sky in hopes that happenstance will line up to grant you your hope. God is not some genie in the bottle that grants our every wish or even a wise cricket that speaks into our ear. Hope is not wishing on a possibility. Hope is confidence in a sure thing. Where wishing hangs on a possible future, hoping hangs on a sure future.

Hope is a way of living. Wishing can be a way of stumbling through life thinking it will all work out somehow. But hope is a way of walking through life sure of the eventual outcome. Hope is a way of engaging life – hope is a way of living. It is the Habit of Optimistic, Patient Expectation. Write it down – H.O.P.E. – a Habit of Optimistic, Patient Expectation. Now let’s break that down a little bit.

It takes many days to establish a new habit and many more days to break a bad habit. What are some of the habits you have – good or bad? For example, I’m in the habit of brushing my teeth before I go to bed. But I also have the habit of cracking my knuckles.

Hoping for God’s future isn’t just something we can wake up in the morning and decide we are going to do and then it’s done for all time. Hope is a daily, hourly, and sometimes a minute-by-minute decision – a habit.

Anyone who is trying to start a new discipline can tell you that it is not always easy to shift from the way we’ve always done something to a new way of doing it. For instance, making a change in a diet is not something that you make the decision once and never have to worry about again. No, if you’re going to change your diet it means making certain choices multiple times a day. It means thinking before you eat. It means making a decision before something goes into the grocery cart. But like most habits – it does get easier the more you work at it.

Making a habit of living in hope is similar. As we go through our days and make decisions based in hope, it get easier and it truly becomes a part of our life – a way of living. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome with the idea that they will make a habit out of hope.

Now when I use the word optimistic I don’t mean the trite calls to always look on the bright side of life. I’m not talking about simply looking at glasses as half-full. I’m talking about the type of surety in the goodness of the future that motivated the heroes of our faith.

Take for example, David. When David was just a boy he came to bring his brothers something to eat on the battlefield. That’s when he saw Goliath who was challenging the Israelite army – mocking them and telling them that there was no way they would triumph over him. But David was so optimistic – so sure of the future outcome that he went out there with nothing but a slingshot and five smooth stones. He had five – but it only took one. That’s the type of optimism that I mean when talking about hope.

Look also at Paul, the author of this letter to the Roman Christians. He had been put through the ringer. He had been shipwrecked at least twice. He had been arrested and beaten multiple times. He had been run out of towns and had his life threatened. And yet here he is writing about hope. Now hearing about hope from a person like that speaks powerfully. He doesn’t dismiss all of the awful things that have happened to him or even dismiss the awful things he has done, but through it all, he has hope for the future.

We have been assured through the action of Christ that the future belongs to God. Because we have that assurance we can be optimistic about our future. We can move forward with this optimistic habit of hope.

I have heard it said time and time again that patience is a virtue and some people just don’t have it. But the type of patience that is found in hope is not simply the patience to wait your turn in the supermarket line. Patience is about being able to trust that God’s future will triumph, even in the midst of the suffering and pain we see around us.

I have to laugh when I hear people talking about the patience of Job. Because they usually have in mind a picture of Job just sitting around twiddling his thumbs and waiting for God to act. Job had had every thing imaginable happen to him. He lost his children, his livestock, and even his health and finds himself sitting on an ash heap scraping at his sores with a broken piece of pottery. But in the midst of his despair, Job is anything but the embodiment of the phrase "the patience of Job." He speaks of his anguish and wails about the bitterness he feels in his soul. Patience for Job isn’t sitting silent on an ash heap just waiting for good things to happen to him.

The real patience of Job is what I’m talking about. The type of patience that doesn’t just sit back and remain silent while the whole world is in turmoil. The type of patience that is contained in the word hope is the type of patience that speaks up for those who have no voice. It’s the type of patience that isn’t afraid to call out those who are abusing their power.

Another word Paul relates to hope is endurance. The thesaurus lists endurance as a synonym for patience. Patience is about keeping at the task – enduring to the end. This patience – this endurance – is what Paul is talking about in relationship to hope. Hope is the habit of optimistic patient expectation.

When we hope, we solidly expect God’s future to come about. Expectation is confident belief that something will occur. When we say that we hope for God’s future, we fully expect it to come about.

When God called Abraham out to look at the stars in the night sky and promised that this descendants would out-number the stars, Abraham had an expectation. He expected that what God promised would come true. However, it was the method of that coming about that would surprise him and his family. But even with all the set backs and twists and turns, Abraham fully expected that what God promised would happed, would indeed happen.

That’s the type of expectation that is wrapped up in hope. The expectation that God’s future will happen – even though we can’t always guess the method or the timetable. That is hope.

When we live in the habit of hope we are living out that habit of optimistic, patient expectation in God’s future. Paul writes that we are justified by Christ. In other words, we are brought into a right relationship with God through Christ. We are acquitted through Christ. This is what we hope for. This is what we are sure of because hope, when we talk about it in the church, isn’t some wishing on a star-type possibility. Hope is a sure thing.

We hope because we are confident in God’s power. We hope because we fully expect God’s outcome to win out in the end. We hope because we are under God’s love, we hope because we have the ability to follow and be obedient to God. As we make a habit of speaking for those whose voice is not heard, we hope in God’s future when all voices will be heard and when all cries for justice will be answered.

[reference to Children’s sermon display. Shelf with wooden "Hope" sign flanked by cross and chalice with scarf depicting water. We can hope because of the cross and the way we can access God through the sacraments.]

Now, let’s make a habit of that kind of optimistic, patient expectation. Let’s make a habit of hope.