“Mama, what’s hope?” my 5-year-old asked when we reached the end of his favorite book. Well, less of a book and more of a primer. There isn’t a story to it; instead, the pages are filled with colorful illustrations of Star Wars creatures, characters, and transports along with their names. The final pages feature the words “fear” and “hope.” Fear accompanies the masked villains, illuminated red lightsabers, and a dark color scheme. But hope has a brighter, inviting color scheme. It has twice as many people, bright blue and green lightsabers, and lots of smiles.

He didn’t need to ask me what fear meant, we all know fear, and we learn it young. Fear doesn’t need an introduction. It’s that sinking feeling in your stomach that makes you check under the bed, it makes you close the closet door but keep the bedroom door open so the hall light can filter in.

But hope? Hope is harder to explain. When it’s brought up at church it always feels convoluted and complicated and talked about like it’s a lesser version of faith. Was that it? Did we need to talk about faith and hope? Maybe that would give him an answer. No, that would be way too much, plus I would be giving him an answer he wouldn’t understand to a question he didn’t ask. Plus, I still struggle to pinpoint the difference between the two because it feels more semantic than practical. I immediately pushed that out.

Could I explain hope as a big, strong rope you cling to when things get really bad? It’s something that helps you when you don’t know what else will help? But that still doesn’t explain what exactly hope is, and it still didn’t feel quite right. Sure, hope was something strong you could hold onto, something people could see, but hope also feels fragile, like something you tuck into your pocket for safekeeping that no one else can see. And in day-to-day life, wasn’t that important? Big, life-changing trials come to everyone, but usually, it’s the drip, drip, dripping of life’s constant pressures and worries that wears on us and needs a measure of hope so we can survive.

I know what that hope feels like. It feels like facing the sun and reveling in its warmth when life feels cold. Hope is turning on a favorite song because I know it will lighten my mood just a little. Hope is not giving in to despair when it’s someone else’s turn to shine and I’ve felt dull for far too long and wonder if I’ll ever sparkle again. Hope is knowing that good things are coming.

There it was. I’d found my answer. Short, simple, and void of theological semantics. Hope is knowing that what is troubling you now, won’t trouble you forever. It’s knowing that good things are on the horizon even if you don’t know when they’ll arrive. Hope lets you find beauty and goodness, no matter how small, in the current moment even when it’s hard because you know the hard parts won’t last forever.

“Baby,” I said, “I think hope is knowing that good things are coming.”

“Oh, that’s hope? I didn’t know that before.”

Baby, I’m not quite sure I knew that before either, at least not in that beautiful simplicity, but now I do thanks to you. Good things are in store for all of us.