Hope

I am still on hiatus; however, I could not let this weekend pass without sharing an excerpt of an email I received today from Bro. Brady, our Pastor. How timely a message for me after the past few weeks.

As your pastor, I want to encourage you to spend some time this Holy Week in private devotion, focusing on the magnitude of the sacrifice Christ made for you on the Cross. I believe your private devotional time will, in many ways, enhance our corporate times of worship on Easter. Often we come into worship services without a sense of expectation; such was the case of the women who came to the tomb on that first Easter morning. They were expecting death, but the surprise of the ages awaited them. The stone was rolled away, and Christ had risen—Hope had truly come.

We live in a world surrounded by emptiness; many are experiencing emotional emptiness, relational emptiness, or professional emptiness. The cure for emptiness is the Hope of Easter. I am writing this email in a small, twin-prop plane, high above the mountains of Panama. I “hope” I make it down. I “hope” my luggage arrives too (wishful thinking I know). I “hope”, but I can’t be sure. There are very few certainties in life.

One of the things I love most about Easter is that Hope is changed from wishful thinking to an absolute certainty. The resurrection of Jesus changed everything. Christ is alive; death is defeated; the barriers in our lives that keep us penned in can be rolled away...

Yesterday, one of my closest and dearest friends said something that I hope I will always remember. We don't praise God because He WILL answer our prayers, but we praise Him because we know that He CAN. I think it is easy to be hopeful when things are good. I think it is much more difficult to remember we have hope when we find ourselves surrounded by a sea of uncertainty. Life happens. If it hasn't happened to you, it will (whether you like it or not). I wish I could say that I am overflowing with joy and hopefulness at this moment but in reality that would be a lie. What I can say is I am reminded we have hope in all circumstances, both the good and the bad, because of the sacrifice one man made for each and every one of us.

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." -Romans 15:3