Malcolm Fraser once famously said, “Life wasn’t meant to be easy.” For every one of us life brings difficulty and struggle. Every day we learn of disasters, injustices and conflict in some part of the world. Faced with these realities, it is easy to succumb to the temptation to curl up in a ball and despair. Either that or numb the pain with some type of escape into triviality. When we constantly see injustice winning the day and the poor remaining poor, we can wonder what the point is of trying to make the world a better place. At such times it is easy to grow weary of doing good.

One of the stories in my recently released book, Hope, tells of the tales I grew up with as a young boy in Melbourne. I used to love hearing the stories of Bible heroes like David defeating Goliath, but it was the stories of Jesus that were given the highest regard.

Everyone loves stories. In any speech or sermon they are what stick in people’s minds. The stories I have heard over the years have a dominant thread of hope in them. I am a hopeful person who believes that life can and does have a way of giving us the impetus to keep going in hard times, and to keep working for what might otherwise seem like a ‘hopeless’ cause. But hope is not just a sunny personality or ‘glass-half-full’ approach to life; it must have a real basis. For me the ground of all hope is the resurrection of Jesus, and I tried to write this book as a light touch for non-Christians to access.

In the book is a quote from Joan Chittister which says, “Hope is what sits by a window and waits for one more dawn, despite the fact that there isn’t an ounce of proof in tonight’s black, black sky that it can possibly come.” I wonder if Jesus’ disciples had any hope like that in those few dark days between his death and resurrection. I suspect not.

If there is no hope, we as humans can become fatalistic and fall into despair or cynicism. With the enormous amount of suffering in the world, we can be afflicted with doubt and be tempted to give up.

Seeing some of the pain in the world has changed my faith over the years. My faith now is more about living in a relationship with God and seeing God in the person of Christ as one who suffers with us.

In the end though, it is not just knowing that Christ suffers with us that gives me the impetus to keep going. Something in me resonates with a deeper hope. I believe ultimately death has been defeated, that Jesus rose physically from the dead as an act in history 2000 years ago, and that this will lead to a renewal of the whole of creation. One day everything will be made complete and there will be justice for all. That is the hope that ultimately drives me.