If you spend any time on the internet or read motivational magazines, you will soon notice inspirational messages that tell you that the future will be far better than the past, that the best is still to come. It shouldn’t surprise us that those messages are often also promoted by prosperity preachers. After all, they stand to gain something from people’s drive to ensure a better future, often coupled with the message that you have to give or invest now, so that wealth and good fortune will come to you in the future.

But we also know that this is often not true and that many people are disappointed again and again as the fortune and great future they are promised never materialise. Some become despondent, others push the optimism for a better future out ever further.

At the same time, there are many who continually fear the future, who are afraid of what is to come and worry about their life. Sometimes that worry is justified, but often things do not turn out as dark as we have imagined them. And of course, our fears can become self-fulfilling.

I have found in my own life that things hardly ever turn out as bad as I have feared and rarely turn out as great as I imagined. And yet, amidst this disappointment and relief, life is good and beautiful.

For example, before we went to Switzerland earlier this year, I was quite anxious, because I knew there were so many things that could go wrong. It was when the public transport card arrived in the mail at the very last opportunity that all that fell away and I thought that everything would be well. It was. And it was a precious time. But of course there were difficult aspects to it as well: homeschooling did not turn out as easy as I had hoped.

When we look at the world situation, things generally have not turned out as well as we imagined at the beginning of the century. The world seems a more threatening place now than it was 20 years ago. And yet, good things are still happening; there are signs of encouragement.

As Christians we also have hope, hope that through Jesus Christ God will give us a future beyond this present life and will set all things to right. It is because of that hope that we also notice the good things that are happening here and now and that we have the confidence that God already provides for us in this life, even among all the difficulties. As Christians we do not presume that everything will go smoothly, but that God is with us even in our troubles. Light moments and dark times are part of life and God leads us through it all.