This past Friday, we marked the commemoration of the life of C.S. Lewis,(1898-1963) novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, and Christian apologist. Here is a quote of his that speaks to hope -- spes!
Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a
continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people
think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a
Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present
world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did
most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The
Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the
great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished
the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds
were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think
of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven
and you will get earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you will get
neither.
--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book III, Chapter 10
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