Pessimistic Hope

Genesis 13, especially v. 14-18

The Untitled, Open-Ended Study Bible

May 10, 2026

Rev. David Collins

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When Megan and I travel, we always pack incredibly light. We each take one backpack that is small enough to fit under the seat in front of us. We do that for a few reasons.

First, if you don’t check a bag, they can’t lose it and ruin your trip. Sure it’s only 1% chance that will happen, but we don’t get out much, so we want to remove as many negative possibilities as possible.

Second, we like feeling superior to all of you with your wheelie bags. There’s nothing wrong with wheelie bags, and one day my back will probably demand that I move over to a wheelie bag too…possibly because I throw it out by patting myself on the back too hard for traveling with just a backpack.

But the most important reason we pack so light is because we are not going to take part in that fight for overhead bin space. You know what I’m talking about.

It starts in the boarding line. Group 1 gets called, and somehow Group 4 is already standing there with one foot in the jet bridge, looking surprised that rules still exist. Everybody is pretending to look at their phones, but they’re using their peripherals to check out each other’s bags.

Then the voice on the intercom says, “This is a full flight, so we’re looking for volunteers to check bags.” And the whole line goes silent. They tighten their grip on their handles. Somebody slides their roller bag behind their leg like that’ll help. A tumbleweed rolls by.

Because everyone knows there may not be enough room. And if there isn’t, we are all about to find out what kind of people we really are.

So we keep it under the seat. You can have the bin. I’ll just pack less.

Optimism, Pessimism, Hope and Despair

One thing we’re going to talk about today is optimism and pessimism and how they line up with hope and despair. You can learn a lot about those things watching that line.

Optimism says, “I think we’ll be fine,” even from boarding group 6.

Pessimism (me) says, “I have made arrangements because I do not trust the bins or humanity before 7 a.m.”

Despair says, “This is why I hate flying,” to no one in particular, but also to everyone.

Hope says, “I don’t know how this will go, but anything is possible. Also, we are about to travel through the sky in a tube, which is still a miracle.”

Most people confuse optimism with hope, and pessimism with despair. But they’re not the same things at all.

Hope goes much deeper. And the hope of Abraham goes even deeper than that. It is not confidence in that things will go well.

Hope is confidence in the faithfulness of God.

Genesis 13

We just made this huge shift in Genesis. It went from having this global focus, and then zoomed way in on one family, Abram and Sarai, two nobodies from nowhere, whom God has chosen to bring blessing into the world.

Today we’re picking up with Genesis 13. Last week, Megan gave us a preview of where their story is going. After Abram’s initial call, and his faithful response, he and his whole entourage went to Egypt to survive a famine, and he tried living by his wits and some trickery. God’s love for him was so great, that Abram’s deception got everyone else in trouble. God was like the friend who doesn’t ask what you did to get yourself in trouble, he just jumps in and starts throwing plagues.

So Abram left/got kicked out of Egypt, and it seems that he learned his lesson for now. Here in chapter 13, there is no trickery, or even shrewdness. Here he is just faithful, and shows us what it means to live by hope.

Genesis 13: "1 So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had and Lot with him, into the Negeb. 2 Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold."

5 Now Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, 6 and the land could not support both of them living together because their possessions were so great that they could not live together. 7 Thus strife arose between the herders of Abram’s livestock and the herders of Lot’s livestock. At that time the Canaanites and the Perizzites lived in the land.

“This is a full flight, so we’re looking for volunteers to check bags.”

Abram and Lot both have flocks and herds and tents, and the land can’t hold it all. Plus, the Canaanites and Perizzites are already there. Other people have their bags in the bins too.

Now, an optimist might ignore the problem. “I’m sure it will all work out.” Optimism is just procrastination sometimes. “Let’s deal with that tomorrow”

But Abram doesn’t do that. Abram is a good pessimist here, in the best sense. He sees the problem clearly. He doesn’t pretend the space is bigger than it is. He knows that if they keep going this way, the little arguments between the herders are not going to stay little for long.

8 Then Abram said to Lot, “Let there be no strife between you and me and between your herders and my herders, for we are kindred. 9 Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right, or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.”

This is a really generous offer to make.

Abram is older. He is the head of the family, the one God called. If anyone has the right to choose first, it is Abram. But he doesn’t.

He lets Lot choose first.

And he’s not naïve. He knows Lot will probably choose the better land, and that he might end up with the harder place. But Abram has something better than the best real estate. He has hope.

People who trust the promise of God do not have to grasp. Lot can take the greener land, because nothing can take away what God has promised to Abram.

10 Lot looked about him and saw that the plain of the Jordan was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar; this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

We’re going to get to that soon. You’re going to want to be here for that. Because it’s not what you’ve heard.

11 So Lot chose for himself all the plain of the Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward, and they separated from each other.

You can almost imagine Lot taking selfies in front of the view. “Big life update fam. So grateful for this new season. Hashtag blessed.”

But not everything that looks like blessing really is

Lot's like “Look at all this. How could this possibly go wrong?”

Well…keep reading.

12 Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the plain and moved his tent as far as Sodom. 13 Now the people of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.

Again, we’ll get to it soon. But just appreciate the foreshadowing for now. Kind of like how we know that almost everyone who wins the lottery ends up worse than they were before, but we also know that wouldn’t happen to me! I’d give most of it away God!

The obvious choice isn’t always the right one. We have no indication that Abram knows that here. He’s probably gritting his teeth a little. Wondering if he should have called first dibs.

But here is when God finally speaks.

14 The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him,

God didn’t whisper in Abraham’s ear ahead of time and say, “Don’t worry, Abram, I got you. Let him take whatever he wants.”

Abram did the generous risky thing. Even though he did not technically have to do. And then watched Lot walk away toward the better land.

It was only after all that, that God spoke.

14 “Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, 15 for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.

Back in Genesis 12, God basically just said, “Go. I’ll show you later.”

Which is a stressful way to start.

Abram has been wandering around on a promise with very few details. But now, after he lets Lot choose first, after he risks ending up with less and does, that God says, “Alright Abram…look around. This is the land I was talking about.”

The promise gets clearer after the act of trust. God goes on.

16 I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.


God is promising land to a landless man and descendants to a childless man.

Abram can’t point to anything yet and say, “See? Here it is.” He can’t prove it.

All he has is what God has said.

It all rests on God.

God is the subject of the sentence. Abram is not being asked to manufacture the future. But to receive it.

Now I don’t know about you, but I would rather be handed a plan than a promise. A plan lets us pretend we know what is going to happen next. But a promise asks us to trust the one who speaks.

17 Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” 18 So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord.

So Abram walks.

He still does not own the land or have a child. But Abram has a promise.

Walter Brueggemann says that in these stories, “promise is God’s mode of presence.”

Promise is God’s mode of Presence

Not a spiritual feeling…or certainty…or a little dotted line showing us exactly where this whole thing is headed.

God is present as promise. God is with Abram by speaking a future Abram could not create for himself.

Which means Abram’s life does not rise and fall based on each day’s wins and losses. Abram can keep walking because the future does not depend on his ability to control it. It depends on the faithfulness of God.

That is the difference between optimism and hope.

Optimism says, “This will probably turn out fine.”

Pessimism says, “No it won’t.”

But hope says, “God has spoken, and that’s enough for me.”

So Abram walks around and surveys all that God has promised to him. He builds an altar and worships, not because of what God has done, but because of what he trusts God is going to do.

So let me ask you something… Why aren’t we acting more like Abram?

Why aren’t we acting more like Abram?

I notice, among you, and in the mirror, that we are taking a wait-and-see approach towards our current collective troubles. We are waiting for God to show up and fix things, and keeping the champagne corked and cellared, until he does.

That’s not hope. That’s despair with a little optimism hail-mary tacked on.

Despair is the belief that the current state is the final state. Sometimes we call that realism, but that’s a cop-out. We might place bets on whether things will get better or worse, but it’s all despair.

It’s all just saying, “It is what it is,” either with a lilt in our voice or a monotone.

Lot shows us optimistic despair.

Optimistic Despair

I see it in the way he looks at the land spread out before him. It’s the obvious choice. He sees the place that will make his life easier and assumes that means it will make his life better. He might thank God for his good luck, but his faith is ultimately in that good luck.

We do this all the time. We equate opportunity with blessing. More money. A better job. And those things may be good. But Lot shows us that not everything that looks like a blessing ultimately is.

Optimistic despair always places its faith in circumstances.

“If I can just get the right opportunity”…“If the right people win”

Then everything will finally be okay.

And that is exactly how a lot of us are talking about the future right now.

A lot of people who care about justice, and the poor, and immigrants, and democracy, are basically getting by on this thought: imagine if the bad people just went away.

And…I get it. But if the whole vision is only, “Maybe they’ll go away and everything will be better,” That is just pretending that relief is forever.

That things will get better on their own and we can go back to minding our own business.

Hope has to go deeper. And it can. Because hope is not based on circumstances changing.

Hope is based on God’s promises, whether we see them come true, or not.

And I’ve got good news for you gloomy Gus’s out there. You can still be a pessimist and have hope. In fact, I’d recommend it.

Pessimistic Hope

Pessimistic hope doesn’t get its feelings hurt when it gets knocked down, because it was expecting to get pushed around all along. Pessimistic hope isn’t shocked and offended when people are mean and nasty. That hope doesn’t depend on people being nice, or on things working out the first time, or the second, or the twentieth. No matter what, pessimistic hope refuses to surrender.

You can have pessimistic hope.

And sure, I’d love to have optimistic hope when I can. That kind that sees signs of life and says, “Maybe things really can improve, and maybe we can help.”

The most important ingredient though…is hope. And we will see over and over again in the story of Abraham, that hope comes from believing God’s promises.

So the question is not just, “Do we think things will get better?”

The question is, “What promises are we actually living by?”

Because if we are only living by what we can see, then Lot is our teacher. We will keep chasing whatever looks like blessing and hoping it saves us.

But if we are living by what God has said, then Abram becomes our teacher. We can walk through uncertain land. We can build altars before the promise has come true. We can live into a future we can’t prove.

It's Not About Us

I think some of us secretly believe that if we make one wrong move, the whole future collapses. One compromised vote. One imperfect strategy. One missed opportunity.

But that puts far too much weight on us.

Abraham’s story is not the story of a man flawlessly carrying the future on his back. It’s the story of a man learning, slowly and unevenly, to trust that God carries the future.

That does not mean our choices are meaningless. It does not mean the ends justify the means. It just means that the fulfillment of God’s promise is larger than any one moment of success or failure.

God is still the subject of the sentence.

What if we really believed what God has promised?

That he will never leave us or forsake us?


That nothing can separate us from the love of God?


That the meek will inherit the earth?


That God is making all things new?


That death does not get the last word?


That the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it?

What if we believed the promise that can’t be expressed by one verse but is witnessed to by all of them?

The promise that God has not abandoned this world.

That history is not trapped in an endless cycle of violence and greed and despair.

That the kingdom of God is not just about escaping to somewhere else when we die, but about heaven and earth finally becoming one…about all things being made new.

That one day swords really will become plowshares.

That tears really will be wiped away.

That the poor and forgotten and trampled will not stay that way forever.

That love is stronger than death.

That Jesus Christ is Lord, and Caesar is not.

That the resurrection of Jesus is not just good news for us privately, but the beginning of a whole new creation breaking into this one.

And that every small act of mercy and justice and forgiveness and truth telling is not wasted, even when it looks small, because it belongs to that coming kingdom.

Hebrews says that Abraham and Sarah and the others “died in faith without having received the promises,” (11:30) but they saw them from a distance and greeted them.

I love that image.

They did not get to hold the whole thing in their hands, or get every loose end tied up before they died.

But they saw the future God promised from far away. And they waved.

That’s hope.

To wave at the kingdom before it fully arrives.

To keep feeding people, forgiving people, telling the truth, welcoming strangers, resisting cruelty, and building beloved community even when the results feel small.

Abram walked the land before he possessed it.

He built an altar before the promise came true.

And maybe that’s our work too.

To travel a little lighter through this world.

To stop grabbing for every shrinking little bin of security and control.

To trust that God’s future cannot be stolen from us.

And to keep walking toward it, even if right now we can only see it from a distance.