Living in the world today with its calamity, terror and injustice, things can feel pretty hopeless—especially when each day brings an account of something horrible taking place.

We find ourselves standing up for our African-American brothers and sisters in the struggle against racism, grieving with those who are the victims of terrorism and evil, voicing reason into a climate of political turmoil and striving to bring love into the relationships with those around us. Yet with every step forward, it seems that we take a large step backward in hope, which exists for ourselves and this world as more people are victimized with every passing day.

We’re left wondering: “Is there any hope?”

Where can it be found?

Do we find our hope from politicians? No, it seems—especially now—that we have little hope to be found in them.

What about in movements of social justice? We have seen the faults of humankind, and we should recognize that hope is uncertain even in the most respectful and well-intentioned of people.

Perhaps we should find hope from our religious leaders—the pope, pastors, priests—who have devoted themselves to some degree of piety and greater good.

Again, no. We have seen time and time again that even the most reverent among us have their shortcomings and downfalls, so hope in them, too, is unreliable.

Can hope be found anywhere? That question, at its core, is the grand problem.

Our search for hope is, in all honesty, hopeless; we’re looking in all the wrong places.

Well-founded hope presupposes a reliable trust in the subject of what is being hoped in, and for Christians, their hope is trust in God.

The search for hope is hopelessly futile if it is found anywhere other than in God. This reality is captured well in the Psalmist’s writing, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” (Ps. 20:7).

The hope of Christians is built on the faithful promises of God throughout the entirety of Scripture. Hope, in this sense, is without concern of temperament and not reliant on circumstance or any human condition; it is an assured faith in the person and character of God.

Hope in any limitation of this world is something to be pitied. The reasoned hope of trusting in God, who has made known His loving promises, is the only grounds for hope of any kind.

In this world, there will be suffering and evil; it is a curse that plagues humankind out of their own doing.

We possess the freedom to think and act in any way we choose, and we have chosen to live in the conditions of these present evils. But God seeks to redeem us to Him—to be set free from the bondage of these evils, or as one writer words it, “the reversal of this curse”—and to adopt us as sons and daughters of a glory that knows no calamity, terror or injustice in the age to come.

Where is your hope found?

Is it in the faults of humanity? Or is your hope in the goodness and faithfulness of God? We need to trust the One who sent His only Son to pay the price of our evil, to cleanse us of our curse and to adopt us as His sons and daughters in faith.

“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)