And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

Paul states that faith, hope, and love are essential ingredients in the Christian life. Faith is a disposition and attitude toward God; hope is a disposition and attitude toward the future and love is a disposition and attitude toward others. Christian experience sits on this three-legged stool. If one leg breaks, the stool collapses. Love without faith, faith without hope and hope without love is not a functioning Christian life. These three remain interdependent and operating together.

Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as, "confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." When it comes to the finished work of Jesus Christ, all He made possible by His death, burial and resurrection is available to those who place their faith in Him. Having been saved by faith, we then live by faith. Living by faith is an everyday disposition of trust in Him through whatever life presents to us, trusting God, even though we may not see tangible end results. We 'walk by faith and not by sight' (2 Corinthians 5.7). Who we trust is brought to bear against what we see, feel and experience.

Hope is not optimism, as in, "I hope they saved me some apple pie," or "I hope it will be sunny all week." In Scripture, hope is in objective realities. Viktor Frankle wrote 'Man's Search for Meaning' about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp in which his parents, his new wife and many friends died. He concluded, 'to survive any hardship, life needs to be oriented to the future.' He also said, 'A person can live with any past, if they have a sense of future.' Hope orientates our lives around a secure future, and in so doing gives a more satisfying present. Without hope we may crumble in the face of hard times.

Love is the greatest of all virtues, because as John states, "God is love" (1 John 4:8 & 16). Love is not an attribute of God, as is His omnipotence or omniscience. Love is His very being. Everything that is true of God is permeated with love. All He does, says and promises can be understood as the expression of love, for that is His nature.

These qualities of faith, hope and love enable us to navigate the traumas of life with a measure of stability.