More on Hope!! ... from Elder Uchdtorf

From Elder Uchdtorfs talk " Infinite Power of  Hope"

 

"The adversary uses despair to bind hearts and minds in suffocating darkness. Despair drains from us all that is vibrant and joyful and leaves behind the empty remnants of what life was meant to be. Despair kills ambition, advances sickness, pollutes the soul, and deadens the heart. Despair can seem like a staircase that leads only and forever downward.

 

Hope, on the other hand, is like the beam of sunlight rising up and above the horizon of our present circumstances. It pierces the darkness with a brilliant dawn. It encourages and inspires us to place our trust in the loving care of an eternal Heavenly Father, who has prepared a way for those who seek for eternal truth in a world of relativism, confusion, and of fear."

 

"Hope sustains us through despair. Hope teaches that there is reason to rejoice even when all seems dark around us."  We learn to cultivate hope the same way we learn to walk, one step at a time... There may be times when we must make a courageous decision to hope even when everything around us contradicts this hope. Like Father Abraham, we will “against hope [believe] in hope.”Or, as one writer expressed, “in the depth of winter, [we find] within [us] an invincible summer.”