I have a friend by the name of Wes Ellis. I love this man and his family. I don’t know if he even knows this, but he and his family, and their quiet and unassuming love helped get me through one of the more difficult times of my life. He is currently the Associate Pastor of First UMC of Tom’s River and I tell him, periodically, that he is still pastoring me from afar. We don’t speak very much, but I do follow him on Face Book and via his (occasional) blog “Searching for God in all the Wrong Places”.  The other day I ran across this FB post from him, “Avoid pessimism. But avoid optimism too. Choose, instead, to be hopeful.” I read that and thought, “Wait! I’ve been trying to be so optimistic!” Even when you’re not – fake it till you make it – right. And here he is saying, just be hopeful. In the comments, he goes on to quote Jürgen Moltmann, “Genuine hope is not blind optimism. It is hope with open eyes, which sees the suffering and yet believes in the future.” To which I further thought, “Pffft. What the heck does he know? I’m just going to continue to be optimistic. It’s so much grander than simply hopeful.” At that point, I was thinking about my life and where it was going, but tonight I’m thinking of more mundane matters. This really isn’t all that theologically oriented – as his post perhaps was, but – I ended up putting optimism into play when I last talked about how many trees we were going to get into the ground this weekend. I believe I said, “most, if not all.” Seems I should have been hopeful, rather than so optimistic. Continue reading →