7 Steps to Grow Your Spiritual Hope
All it takes is one bloom of hope to make a spiritual garden (Terri Guillemets)
We walked into the small room with eight men wearing bright orange jumpsuits; one man’s presence surprised us. “Kevin, weren’t you going to get out on work release?!” He smiled. “I told my lawyer I wanted to stay in. I want to re-do the course with you guys.”
At that moment, Kevin was no longer the hope-starved person we met seven weeks prior. He just demonstrated the first bloom of hope — he chose to be hopeful.
Does hope lead to spirituality, or does spirituality lead to hope?
I first introduced Kevin’s story in Spirituality — The Secret to the Power of Hope. When our small team first met Kevin, he was an angry, sullen, sad young man who felt abandoned by the world and those he loved. The trauma Kevin experienced caused him to lose confidence in a spiritual presence that could guide him, empower him, and protect him.
Kevin found himself without hope and a spiritual foundation.
Research shows that spirituality leads to hope. In the article, Hope and Spirituality in the Age of Anxiety, Dr. Anthony Scioli says:
“hope is an especially relevant virtue in the…
