Easter Hope
I like graphic tee-shirts with interesting designs. I wear them several days a week. But there are plenty of graphic tee-shirts I don’t like. Some have crude or stupid statements on them. I prefer tee-shirts without any words. In fact, I have only one graphic tee that isn’t word-free. And that shirt has only one word: HOPE.
Without hope there is little reason to get out of bed. Hope keeps us moving. Life without hope is like staring at a blank wall. Without hope we won’t start a project, begin a relationship, or take on a cause. Hope is what moves us forward and inspires us to keep going even when we face disappointments and frustrations.
Life without hope is already half dead. All of us have moments when we see little in the future that lifts our hearts or makes us want to move forward another step. Sometimes when we have endured repeated setbacks we can come to believe our best efforts for even the most noble of causes are fruitless.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Those words were not spoken lightly. Dr. King certainly faced grave disappointments and he knew dark times. But he continued, believing as he did that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” So even if justice was not apparent on the horizon, he continued moving forward.
Easter is a hope-filled celebration. On this week above all weeks, we see the most hope-shattering of events reversed. Torturous death is overturned by life. Dread and despair are vanquished by divine possibility. Hope! Scripture tells us we have a “living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3).
Our hope is not in what we can do but in what God has done and can do again. And so we do not give up but instead trust in the wondrous ways of God. Come and celebrate the One who is the foundation of our hope this Sunday!
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Craig