Anchored in Hope Genesis 8:20-9:17
Anchored in Hope
Genesis 8:20-9:17
Rev. Dr. Rhonda Abbott Blevins
November 2, 2025
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humans, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.” God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life. Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed, for in his own image God made humans. “And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and have dominion over it.” Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
______
The rainbow. The sign of the covenant between God and all humanity that God will never again destroy all flesh.
Don’t you love seeing a rainbow in the sky? It’s always surprising, always delightful—directing our gaze heavenward to look at the dazzling array of colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
When I was in college, some friends and I went hiking one Saturday. We were finished hiking near early dusk, when rainbows appear, and we saw the most beautiful double rainbow! Being college kids, footloose and fancy free, we decided to chase the end of the rainbow and find the pot of gold. We actually found it! There wasn’t literal gold, but it became a golden memory as we danced and marveled in the refracted and reflected colors at the end of a rainbow.
I bet you have a rainbow story too: the most beautiful rainbow you’ve ever seen, or perhaps a rainbow that appeared just when you needed a ray of hope in your life.
In the story of Noah we read together, we discovered that God set the rainbow in the sky as a promise to humanity. Therefore, the rainbow is a symbol of hope. Hope is an important anchor for us in these VUCA times . . . these volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous days in which the world feels unmoored.
Why is hope an important anchor for us? Let’s start with what contemporary research tells us about the benefits of hope in our lives:
· Better physical health outcomes - Studies show that people with higher levels of hope tend to have stronger immune function, lower rates of chronic illness, and better cardiovascular health.
· Enhanced mental health and resilience - Hope is strongly associated with lower rates of depression and anxiety and helps people cope more effectively with stress and adversity.
· Improved academic and professional performance - Research demonstrates that hopeful individuals tend to set more challenging goals, show greater persistence when facing obstacles, and ultimately achieve better outcomes in educational and work settings.
· Stronger recovery from trauma and illness - Hope has been shown to predict better recovery trajectories for people dealing with serious health conditions, chronic pain, and traumatic experiences.
· Greater overall life satisfaction and well-being - Hope consistently correlates with higher levels of happiness, life satisfaction, and sense of meaning.
So practically speaking, hope helps us navigate this life, especially in these VUCA times. In fact, a lack of hope leads to depression and/or despair. Who here wants depression and despair? Not too many? Then let’s explore this “hope” thing—what it is at its most profound level, and how we live in this hope.
To do so, let’s talk about the difference between ordinary hope and extraordinary hope—or perhaps more to the point—the difference between ordinary hope and holy hope, the kind of hope I think the Apostle Paul was talking about in Romans 8:24-25:
For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
But there’s a shadow side to hope we don’t often consider.
T.S. Eliot once wrote:
I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope,
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
The shadow side of hope is that far too often we hope for the wrong things. This unevolved, immature hope is like a grasping done out of a sense of lack or poverty. We hitch ourselves to certain outcomes, to things ending up a certain way. This is a hope bound up with fear: “I hope I get that promotion” or “I hope that the stock market improves.” Then when things don’t turn out how we hope, we find ourselves disappointed.
This hope rollercoaster is a sure sign that our hope isn’t a holy hope, but an ordinary hope—a hope borne not of spirit but of ego. This is small hope—hope with a little “h” instead of a big “H.”
The fact of the matter is that most of us attach ourselves to small, specific outcomes without the vantage point of future knowledge.
I’ve told the story before about the Chinese farmer:
A Chinese farmer gets a horse, which soon runs away. A neighbor says, "That's bad news." The farmer replies, "Good news, bad news, who can say?” The horse comes back and brings another horse with him. Good news, you might say. The farmer gives the second horse to his son, who rides it, then is thrown and badly breaks his leg. "So sorry for your bad news," says the concerned neighbor. "Good news, bad news, who can say?" the farmer replies. In a week or so, the emperor's men come and take every able-bodied young man to fight in a war. The farmer's son is spared.
Unlike the Chinese farmer, we get attached to outcomes—to small “h” hopes—that may not be best in the long run. We must get off the hope rollercoaster and begin to live in a deeper hope, a holy hope, a big “H” hope.
Famed author Barbara Kingsolver once said this:
Here’s what I’ve decided. The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for, and the most you can do is live inside that hope, not admired from a distance, but live right under it, under its roof. What I want is so simple, I almost can’t say it. Elementary kindness.
So how do we “live inside that hope?” How do we anchor our lives in a holy hope?
Psychologist and spiritual teacher Tara Brach says that a holy hope has 3 characteristics . . .
1. An aspiration towards our highest potential
2. A trust that it is possible
3. An energy to engage, to support the manifesting of this potential
Let’s look at each of these characteristics of holy hope in more detail.
First, the aspiration towards our highest potential. In other words, does the hope we have connect with what really matters? Does it point to a core value like love, service, creativity. Is our hope akin to the flower that hopes to blossom or to the acorn that hopes to become an oak? Holy hope is embedded in us like DNA, it simply awaits the unfolding. Sometimes this feels like passion—a passion that wants to become all that we were meant to be. Sometimes it comes across as vision, like the Bible says, “Without vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18). Are we living each day as if it really counts? Ordinary hope is small “h” hope. Holy hope aspires to reach our highest potential. This is the first characteristic of a holy hope.
The second characteristic of a holy hope is trust that it is possible. Henry David Thoreau wrote:
Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has
been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed
there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.
An acorn does not have to work, stretch or hustle to become an oak tree. It just needs the right environment in which to grow. In the same way, can we believe that our lives are unfolding as they should? That the seedlings of our lives are in God’s loving, nurturing hands?
Brach tells a story of a time when her health was suffering. She would have good days and bad days with her health, and on the good days she felt hopeful, but on the bad days she felt deflated or defeated. She recognized this pattern in herself, so she called on her wiser nature, and set this intention: “I want to trust in love, in presence, in the goodness of life whether things are up or down.” She imagined her future self, a more evolved self, guiding her to trust the unfolding and be at peace whether she was having a good health day or a bad health day.
Holy hope is an aspiration toward our highest potential. Holy hope believes that it is possible. And the third characteristic of a holy hope is that there is an energy to engage that hope. There’s an active, dynamic quality to this holy hope. Holy hope requires that we actively move toward the aspiration. We don’t sit around—we put ourselves out there—we invest ourselves in the holy ideal we want to manifest.
So, the three characteristics of a holy hope:
1. An aspiration towards our highest potential
2. There’s a trust that it is possible
3. There’s an energy to engage, to support the manifesting of this potential
Brach tells a story about a spiritual teacher, a monk named Nomoto. Nomoto dedicated his life to helping suicidal people. He was so dedicated to his work, that he was always on call, 24-7, helping people who wanted to end it all. Well, no surprise, Nomoto fell very ill. And again, no surprise, very few people reached out to him in his time of need. This was so disappointed to him—so isolating. Nomoto decided to change up how he worked with people. That anyone who wanted to work with him would have to travel to him at the temple, which was not an easy place to reach. This naturally reduced the number of people who sought Nomoto’s help, but those who did tended to have a much deeper experience.
Nomoto told a story about a man who decided to travel to see him for help. The man was a shut in, he rarely communicated with anyone—he rarely left his home or stepped outside. As he began the five-hour walk to see Nomoto at the temple—as he moved his body, as he worked up a sweat—he thought about what he’d say to Nomoto once he saw him. For five hours, moving, sweating, reflecting. And by the time he reached Nomoto’s temple, he announced that he had achieved understanding. He no longer needed Nomoto’s help. The man turned around and walked home.
What a perfect example of someone with a holy hope:
1. He aspired toward something higher, something better
2. He trusted that something better was possible
3. He actively engaged as he set out to walk five hours toward that something better
In that process, the man found what he needed. At a physiological level—a biochemical level—hope was there.
Friends, we need hope to navigate these VUCA days, but ordinary hope won’t do. We need an extraordinary hope—a holy hope—a rainbow-in-the-sky kind of hope that helps us aspire to our highest potential, knowing that God will protect us and carry us until that day when all hope is fulfilled.
Don’t be like average people, with banal rollercoaster hopes. Small hopes are for small people. Let us anchor our lives in the kind of hope that knows God has something for us beyond the storm, beyond the flood.
I invite you to consider how you might further anchor your life in holy hope:
· Aspire. What is the highest potential to which God is calling you, because God obviously isn’t done with you yet!
· Trust. Find a way to believe that your highest potential is achievable.
· Engage. Start walking in the way of that higher potential. Don’t wait! Start today!
May the rainbow remind us to anchor our lives in holy hope. God knows we need it.