The Difference between Wishing and Hoping

Eugene Peterson, in Living the Message, Daily Help for Living the God-Centered Life (p. 290, Harper One, 1996), makes a really helpful distinction between wishing and hoping. "Wishing grows out of our egos; hope grows out of our faith. Hope is oriented toward what God is doing; wishing is oriented toward what we are doing...Wishing is our will projected into the future, and hope is God's will coming out of the future. Picture it in your mind: wishing is a line that comes out of me, with an arrow pointing into the future. Hoping is a line that comes out of God from the future, with an arrow pointing toward me."

In talking with Jen, our resident bridge between the worlds of faith and science, I have begun to see this at work in creation. In God, there is really no time. For us limited finite creatures, we experience God at the beginning giving the push that began all of creation. We experience God in the midst of creation as the incarnated presence redeeming creation and as the Spirit who touches us with grace. And we experience God pulling us towards the fulfillment of all creation, which for us is in the future, though for God, it exists now and eternally.

While it may not seem to make much difference to our everyday, practical lives, it actually makes an incredible difference. How we live and experience the present moment is very different when we are hoping that things could or would be better rather than living in expectation, "anticipation of what God is going to do next."

This is a part of why my prayer is not for God to bless what I am doing, but that I may be a part of what God is blessing, since that is actually a part of the pull of the fullness of creation in God.