Hope and Faith and Love

I finished the last post on this topic with a statement that surprised me when I wrote it: Unrequited love is a hopeful response to the dilemma of freedom.
I did a double-take when I wrote it, and I almost tried again with something different, but I'll stick with it.
I need to clarify my statement, though: unrequited love is not a limitation on hopeful action. Rather, unrequited love cannot become Genuine Love until the action behind it moves beyond hope into the realm of faith.

"Hopeful action" is close to being a misnomer, because hope is not action-specific in the same way that faith is; i.e. one can even be hopeful without acting. Hope is a state of mind; still a decision, but not a decision that needs an external expression.
That said, people will almost always express their state of mind in one way or another, and hopeful actions are very common. What distinguishes a hopeful action from a faithful action is the release of control.
When Job is at his lowest, his darkest, his most depressed, he cries out that his "hope has been uprooted like a tree."
Still, even without hope, Job insists on praise instead of despair:

"As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
And at the last He will take His stand on the earth.
"Even after my skin is destroyed,
Yet from my flesh I shall see God;
Whom I myself shall behold,
And whom my eyes will see and not another.
My heart faints within me!

Perfect Love, Faithful Love, drives out fear; hope is demolished by dire situations. The freedom that we are afraid of losing is something that, ultimately, we cannot claim any real hold on. The freedom of Faith, the freedom that provides a foundation for Genuine Love, can withstand anything.

I think I'm done now. Thanks for reading, I hope you got as much out of this as I did.