hope and faith

I had a great conversation this weekend with some friends that was pretty stimulating. One of the things that we talked about was if there is a difference between hope and faith. Collectively the answer was yes, but it took us a little while to flesh that out. I said that I think people often use the words interchangeably, but I don't think it's always accurate to do so.

According to our friend Wikipedia:

Faith is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, concept or thing. The term is employed in a religious or theological context to refer to a confident belief in a transcendent reality, a religious teacher, a set of scriptures, teachings or a Supreme Being. It may be used to refer to a particular religious tradition or to religion in general.

Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one’s life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best. In a religious context, it is not considered as a physical emotion but as a spiritual grace. Hope is distinct from positive thinking, which refers to a therapeutic or systematic process used in psychology for reversing pessimism.

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."

It definitely was an interesting conversation and it was even more interesting to look up the words to see if we were on the right track. I'm particularly intrigued that Wiki makes a distinction between the definition and the religious context for the words. One of my friends mentioned that she thinks hope refers to things happening in the here and now while faith refers to things in the more distant future. She also thinks hope is essential to life, because without it, what do we have? I would agree with her, but would go so far to say I think both are important.