Walking and reading again

I was walking around the neighborhood and reading, again, and I stopped off at the Howdy Doody for what-nots and hoo-jiggers. The book I'm reading is "Way of the Ascetics", which Dax gave me as a baptism gift. I skipped right to the chapter about 'Inner Warfare', which is what I'm dealing with right now. I was struck in particular by this passage:

We are saved by hope (Romans 8:24)...
...But hope that is seen is not hope.

Wha? Huh? I didn't get that at all at first, but then I read on, and it was explained that once you see hope, it isn't hope, but hope realized; that which you were hoping for.

So what is hope anyway then? I'm still a little confused about that.

So anyway, I walked into the Howdy Doody and put the book down on the counter. The girl behind the counter looked at the book and tried to pronounce the word 'ascetics'. She asked me what the word meant, and I said that it meant... ummm... an ascetic is somebody who hangs out in the desert. And... you know, like a monk or something. A desert monk. Hmmm... but more like, somebody who is religious. A religious person. But more than that, kind of... I don't know really. I guess to my knowledge an ascetic is someone who devotes themselves fully to God.

She brightened at the last part of my tumbledown explanation, and as I was leaving, she said "God Bless!"