In the week that I'm writing this article, Plymouth has heard news about the future of Devonport Dockyard, which is better than many people expected.
The securing of a future for the Dockyard and its workforce, which many thought would be threatened with potential closure in the weeks leading up to the government's spending review, is in no small part due to the collaboration between MP's of differing political persuasions, and the local media.
Alison Seabeck, Gary Streeter, Vivienne Pengelly to name just three, put aside party political differences to fight for the Dockyard, and the press campaign run by the Herald gave the oxygen of publicity to the fight.
It is human nature to side with one or other political party, but to do so at the expense of the 'bigger picture' would lack wisdom. When we all face a common crisis, we have to find a workable solution.
So, the collaboration between MP's of differing politics and also the local media was heartening, and the result for the Dockyard was heartening too.
The outcome was better than many people thought it would be. That is often the way – we can tend to be quite negative about the possible future, and even explain our negativity by calling it 'realism'. It's not really based on reality (who knows the future?), and critics of this way of thinking may call it, instead, pessimism.
Thankfully, those involved in speaking up for the Dockyard did not come from that point of view – if they did, they would have given up the fight long ago in the face of the difficulties that had to be overcome.
I don't think those who worked for the Dockyard's future were led by optimism either. Optimism can be as misleading as pessimism in that it exaggerates the current facts and likely outcomes, but instead of negativity as its basis it uses what some have called 'rose tinted spectacles'. It can be just as unrealistic.
Both pessimism and optimism often fail to deliver what they predict. However, there is a quality that enables us to look at the future without being overly discouraged. That quality is hope.
Hope is a virtue which is perhaps misunderstood in today's society. From a Christian perspective, we're told that three virtues are of the highest value – faith, hope and love, (and that the greatest of these three is love.) And hope is much stronger than optimism.
The ancient definition of the word hope means 'trust' or 'reliance', and even its modern day meaning is very substantial: "desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfilment". (Miriam Webster's online dictionary)
Optimism, on the other hand, is defined as "an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome", which seems to me to be a much weaker thing all together.
So where does hope get its strength from? For those with a Christian faith, it is founded on the nature of the God that we believe in. He is good, he cares for us and he is faithful and will stand with us through every kind of difficulty and trial. Ultimately, he wants our best – even more than we do.
At times it's hard to see where the 'good news' has gone, when life gets tough. That's where that ancient description of hope, being 'trust and reliance', makes real sense. When the sun's shining and all is well with us and our loved ones, we just enjoy it. It's in the dark times that we need hope.
I hope, and pray, that in the trials of life we can all find real hope, and can come to increasingly trust and rely on the goodness of God, even (or especially) in the tough times.
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