I realize that equating hope to a pillow sounds a bit too cutesy, so just hear me out.

William Gurnall lived in the 1600’s and wrote about the relationship between hope and patience. If we have reasons to hope we are more likely to be patient:

“patience is the back where the Christian carries his burdens, and hope the pillow between the back and the burden. Now patience has two shoulders, one to bear the present evil and another to wait for the future good promised but not yet paid.”*

Carrying a boulder (i.e. burden) on your back is hard. But if, as Gurnall writes, you have a pillow between your back and the boulder, you are able to be more patient.

The pillow is hope. Therefore, it begs the question. What do we hope for, and what is our ultimate hope?

–I have hope that one day group hugs will return.
–I have hope that we will stand shoulder to shoulder singing songs on Sunday morning.
–I have hope that some friends will again find employment.
–I have hope that I will wish someone Happy Birthday INSIDE their house.
–I have hope that the pandemic will one day be a memory from the past.

But ultimately, my hope—and our hope—is in Christ and his great victory on our behalf!

“In [God’s] great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade” (1 Peter 1:3-4).

An inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.

Faith + Hope = Patience.

Everything we’re experience now isn’t everything we will ever experience.

Have hope.

---

–*William Gurnall, ed. James S. Bell Jr., The Christian in Complete Armour (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984), entry for Nov 18)