Sundays of Hope and Joy
We live in times of unprecedented anxiety. Anxiety is rooted in fear, but it is more than fear. Anxiety is fear looking forward—it imagines a scenario and lets it play out to its worst possible conclusion, then often causes us to react as if that conclusion has already taken place. Anxiety steals from a potential future and pulls us down in the present. Anxiety looks ahead and is afraid of what it may find.
In a secular definition, hope, like anxiety, also looks to the future. The only difference is that hope is about imagining a positive outcome rather than a negative one. Hope looks ahead and feels good about what it may find. But in both cases, the ultimate resolution is uncertain. In both cases, we are looking to the future and wondering what will take place.
Biblical hope is different. Before it looks ahead, biblical hope first finds its foundation in something that has already taken place—the resurrection of Christ. We don’t rest our hope on some imagined outcome that may or may not be assured, we rest our hope on the sure and certain truth that Jesus Christ, who was crucified, is alive. The tomb is empty, and the powers of sin and death have been defeated. That is where we find our hope!
That’s why these “mini-Easters” of Lent are so important. On Sundays we are reminded that we don’t find our hope in the possibility that something good may yet happen—we find our hope in the fact that the very best thing has already taken place.
With all that is happening in the world today it can seem hard to keep hope alive. The good news of Sunday, the message of these “mini-Easters,” is that hope is already alive. The forces of death conspired against it, but hope is alive. The grave tried to silence it, but hope is alive. And there are still voices today that will tell you it’s no longer real, but those voices are lying. Hope is most definitely alive.
Scripture for Meditation:
“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human, for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”
—1 Corinthians 15:17-22 (NRSV)
Song: You Keep Hope Alive (lyrics here)
Questions for Reflection
Do you give in easily to the temptation to think that hope is about things that might yet happen? How might you find ways to ground your hope in what has already taken place on your behalf in the cross and the empty tomb?
How does the knowledge that Jesus is alive inspire hope in you? When has that knowledge been most real to you?
Today’s song talks about:
—hope in dark days
—hope in the midst of rising evil
—hope in sorrow
—hope in “the breaking.”How has God ministered hope to you in your own experience of these? Spend some time in praise and thanksgiving for his presence and hope in difficult times.