HOPE!
I have been hanging out at my “second” office (Spot Coffee) this morning mainly because we have no functioning office this week since we are still painting and getting things in order at our new renovation offices.
Started reading a new book by N.T. Wright called Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.
There are two questions that he ask the reader to consider in the preface (yes I actually read the preface)
- What are we waiting for?
- What are we going to do about it in the meantime?
12-15 Now, let me ask you something profound yet troubling. If you became believers because you trusted the proclamation that Christ is alive, risen from the dead, how can you let people say that there is no such thing as a resurrection? If there’s no resurrection, there’s no living Christ. And face it-if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors, and everything you’ve staked your life on is smoke and mirrors. Not only that, but we would be guilty of telling a string of barefaced lies about God, all these affidavits we passed on to you verifying that God raised up Christ-sheer fabrications, if there’s no resurrection…
51-58 But let me tell you something wonderful, a mystery I’ll probably never fully understand. We’re not all going to die-but we are all going to be changed. You hear a blast to end all blasts from a trumpet, and in the time that you look up and blink your eyes-it’s over. On signal from that trumpet from heaven, the dead will be up and out of their graves, beyond the reach of death, never to die again. At the same moment and in the same way, we’ll all be changed. In the resurrection scheme of things, this has to happen: everything perishable taken off the shelves and replaced by the imperishable, this mortal replaced by the immortal. Then the saying will come true:
Death swallowed by triumphant Life!
Who got the last word, oh, Death?
Oh, Death, who’s afraid of you now?
It was sin that made death so frightening and law-code guilt that gave sin its leverage, its destructive power. But now in a single victorious stroke of Life, all three-sin, guilt, death-are gone, the gift of our Master, Jesus Christ. Thank God!
With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground. And don’t hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.
Our hope is God through His Son Jesus Christ.
not based on who gets nominated as our next president.
Our Hope should move us to action. Did you get that last line from Paul? Throw yourselves into the work of the Master… What you do now, MATTERS – so you MATTER because of the Hope we have!
