A selection from Amy Carmichael about hope, about continuing to hope when things are turning out the way we expect:

Rom 15.13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

This is a great word for us all.  We need to be continually renewed in hope because, although there are always happy things happening, the devil does not forget us.  Every now and then we are sharply reminded that he is either a roaring lion, walking about among us, seeking whom he may devour; or he is a serpent, the kind that does not shrink away when he hears us coming, but is quite ready to attack and shoot venom at us, as some snakes are said to do so.  I often thank God that He is a God of hope.

It is also a great word for all who love enough to suffer when those who were trusted have disappointed us.  Paul wrote it in one of his earlier letters.  About thirteen years later he wrote his last letter.  The space between those two letters was filled with experiences of joy and sorrow, most of which are unrecorded.  Among these is a story which comes very close to all of us who have had much to do with souls.

We know Paul loved and trusted his children in the faith who had become his fellow-workers.  Twice we find one of these mentioned in the loving list of names at the end of two of his letters [cf. Col. 4.14; Philem. 24].  Then there is silence.  What pangs, what strivings, what prayers, filled that silent space?  We are told nothing of them, but our hearts tell us what his heart went through before he wrote of that same one in his last letter, “Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me” [2 Tim 4.10].

And yet–and it this that comes close to us–there is no weakening in that last letter, no discouragement, no whisper of loss of faith in others, no fear.  “For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind . . . . I know whom I have believed, the God, not of despondency, but of hope” [2 Tim 1.7, 12].