>>2946I have also recently just about concluded that "hope" is perhaps one of the most ambiguous words in the English language.
It can mean:
1. Hope: A vague niggly feeling that things will be ok, despite a fear that they won't be (the flipside of fear) -- definition used by the Stoics.
2. Hope: A weird kind of byprodcut of fear and philosophical/psychological/existentialist thinking.
3. Hope: Absent of fear. Trust as its basis, then "ignited" somehow. i.e. The difference between saying "I trust that [this] will happen" (no fear, just steadiness) and "I hope that [this] will happen" (no fear, with steadiness, but also with something else -- the "ignited" part).
I had always only really mostly just thought of hope as #1 until very recently and I am now reconsidering its underlying definition ....
think i have already nailed down the concepts surrounding faith .... but if #3 is how some people use the word "hope," it does change the way such verses read -- at least, it may add more depth .....