Quotes About Hope

Always think positively and expect the best.

The first task in building a compelling story world is to create hope.

But love doesn't control, and I suppose that's why it's the ultimate risk. In the end, we have to hope the person we're giving our heart to won't break it, and be willing to forgive them when they do, even as they will forgive us. Real love stories don't have dictators, they have participants. Love is an ever-changing, complicated, choose-your-own adventure narrative that offers the world but guarantees nothing.

I no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most of it is just getting up early and tilling the soil and then praying for rain. But if we do the work, we just might wake up one day to find an endless field of crops rolling into the horizon. In my opinion, that's even better than a miracle. I'd rather earn the money than win the lottery because there's no joy in a reward unless it comes at the end of a story.

If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.

I listened so hard because it felt like, while she was telling me stories, she was massaging my soul, letting me know that I was not alone, that I will never have to be alone, that there are friends and family and churches and coffee shops. I was not going to be cast into space.

I didn't want to get well, because if I got well, nobody would come and save me anymore. And I didn't want to get well, because while I could not control my happiness, I could control my misery, and I would rather have had control than live in the tension of what if. A chance of hope is no pacifier against a sure tragedy.

In church, the rules of the lifeboat don't apply. Church is the refuge where the Kingdom of God is emulated, not mocked.

the great stories go to those who don't give in to fear.

Imagine how much a man's life would change if he trusted that he was loved by God.

I wanted it to be an easy story. But nobody really remembers easy stories. Characters have to face their greatest fears with courage. That's what makes a story good. If you think about the stories you like most, they probably have lots of conflict. There is probably death at stake, inner death or actual death, you know. These polar charges, these happy and sad things in life, are like colors God uses to draw the world.

I no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most of it is just getting up early and tilling the soil and then praying for rain. But if we do the work, we just might wake up one day to find an endless field of crops rolling into the horizon.

I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness.

After a tragedy, I think God gives us a period of numbing as a kind of grace. Perhaps he knows our small minds, given so easily to false hope, couldn't handle the full brunt of reality.

He wasn't just calling them into a life of sacrifice. He was calling them into a life of meaning, even the kind of meaning that would involve suffering. Suffering for a redemptive reason is hardly suffering, after all.

All great stories are about survival—either physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual.

The most often repeated commandment in the Bible is "Do not fear." It's in there over two hundred times.

This formula works because human beings experience three levels of problems in their everyday lives. They aren't just looking for a resolution to one level of problem; they're hoping for a resolution to all three.

But it's a good trade, because as soon as you point toward a horizon, life no longer feels meaningless.

The point is that people are drawn to transformation. When they see transformation in others, they want it for themselves.

I didn't want to get well, because if I got well, nobody would come and save me anymore. And I didn't want to get well, because while I could not control my happiness, I could control my misery, and I would rather have had control than live in the tension of what if. A chance of hope is no pacifier against a sure tragedy.

If you haven't done it in a while, pray and talk to Jesus. Ask Him to become real to you. Ask Him to forgive you of self-addiction, ask Him to put a song in your heart. I can't think of anything better that could happen to you than this.

A chance of hope is no pacifier against a sure tragedy.

It made me think about the hard lives so many people have had, the sacrifices they've endured, and how those people will see heaven differently from those of us who have had easier lives.