Read Proverbs 10:29-30

 We toss around words like faith and love all the time. And most of us can describe both with minimal difficulty.

But hope? What in the world is it? And is it really that essential?

Webster defines hope, "to desire with expectation of fulfilment." To hope is to anticipate. It is more than dreaming, however.

It is possessing within ourselves an expectation that someday there will be the fulfilment of that desire. It will become a reality.

Hope always looks to the future, it's always on tiptoes. It keeps us going.

It makes a dismal today bearable because it promises a brighter tomorrow. Without hope, something inside all of us dies....

We can live several weeks without food, days without water, and only minutes without oxygen, but without hope—forget it.

Excerpted from Charles R. Swindoll, Wisdom for the Way (Nashville: J. Countryman, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2001). Copyright © 2001 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.