The tipping point between hope and despair has everything to do with where we focus our eyes.
Hope is the conviction that great things will happen. It's like standing in the middle of a crowded New York City street and moving towards a sky scraper with the expectation that you will be able to ride its elevator to the top floor.
Despair is based on the false assumption that that no possibility for good even exists. Standing in that same place on that city street, a person could turn around to face a garbage infested, dead end alleyway and move forward in that direction with the understanding that it would be impossible to reverse, change direction or go any other way.
The prophet Habakkuk could have chosen to focus his eyes on his physical loss, which to be fair was quite great. Instead, he chose to focus on his God, the maker of all good things, who is infinitely greater.
What are you looking at?
Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.
The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.
-Habakkuk 3:17-19 NRSV
If we live in fear, we derive no strength from our fear. It wears us out. But when we share it with the Lord, when we open our fear to his powerful and loving presence, something begins to shift. “Courage,” the old saw says, “is simply fear that has said its prayers.” What am I most afraid of? What, perhaps, is wearing me out?
And what might it mean to bring that fear trustingly and determinedly within the power of God’s loving care?