EASTER HOPE?
I think it was Woody Allen who said, I feel so much better now that I’ve given up hope! I understand why people might say that. I had a similar experience myself. There’s nothing more disappointing than a false hope. Better to abandon it altogether and just float off on the wild seas of fantasy and fate. False hope is empty…and it really hurts.
But…it seems we can’t live without it, to a greater or lesser degree. We’ve got to have something to look forward to…that big birthday party…that holiday when we can just get away…the success of vaccines, the end of lockdown…normality restored. Of course…either on the micro or on the macro level we all have things to look forward to. This is our hope.
However, none of these ‘hopes’ are guaranteed. Even the hope for nice weather over the Easter weekend?! We ‘hope’ so…but don’t know so. Hopes like this are a shaky foundation to build your life on. Again, many would say, just give them up…and ‘hope for the best’ while we realistically ‘prepare for the worst’?
The Christian message faces these brutal, terminal disappointments with true hope. Everything and everyone in this life will ultimately let us down. All reality is tainted and limited by sin, which ends in death. This is where false hope comes from. But what if there is a reality beyond death which is the answer to sin? What if we could be forgiven by GOD and find power over the grave? What if we could become new people with a living hope of heaven? What if the reality of Easter, in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, can precisely meet our deepest needs? That’s what the Bible calls hope. This is what Easter is all about. May this living hope be alive in you.
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures… he was buried, … he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and…he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve- 1 Corinthians 15:3-5
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