In the most recent Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, the villain, Bane, sets out to torture Batman by confining him to an underground prison while he terrorizes Gotham. The key to Batman's agony, as told us by Bane, is that this prison is holed several stories beneath surface, totally subterranean save for a skylight, a small opening in the cave-like prison that offers the inmates the slightest hope of escape. It is this hope that causes the true despair for the inmates of this prison, and it is this hope that is used to torment Batman.
The hope that Bane refers to is a hope of escaping that, barring an incredible physical act of utter will, will never come to fruition. The chance of hope that strengthens today to crush tomorrow because it fails to followthrough. This is the sort of hope that can break hearts, ruin relationships, and destroy lives. But there is another sort of hope, another source for hope, that is sure and true: the Lord God Almighty.
The Lord is a sure hope not because of what He offers (though He does offer hope), rather the Lord is by His very nature, a source of true hope. God is infinite, omnipotent, wise beyond measure, and limitlessly good. The reason He is the ultimate source of all hope is because of who He is. Any source of hope is but a lowly counterfeit compared to the Lord by way of nature.
Hope promises. The trueness of any particular source of hope is based on whether that hope can deliver on its promises. For this, only God can fulfill hope's requirements, because only God can actually and definitively fulfill His promises. It is because of this that we should place our hope in Him and only Him.
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