Keep Blooming
Read: Colossians 1:15-29 . . . Christ in you, the hope of glory. (v. 27) Our condo has a small piece of dirt, maybe 15 square feet, that’s ours to plant flowers in. My neighbors create breathtaking displays in their little gardens; mine is always an exercise in mediocrity. I have no gardening skills. Last summer I planted […]
Hope in Action
Read: Jeremiah 29:1-14 I know the plans I have for you . . . to give you a future and a hope. (v. 11) Delivering the word of the Lord didn’t make Jeremiah popular. He was beaten and arrested numerous times, put into stocks, and even thrown into a cistern. Despite that, his message after the worst had happened […]
Not Just Me and Jesus
Read: Romans 8:18-30 Who hopes for what he sees? (v. 24) It’s important that our faith and hope are personal. But it’s a mistake if our faith and hope are only personal. Christian hope is not just “I get to go to heaven when I die.” Christian hope is much larger than that. Our ultimate hope […]
Hope Dances!
Read: 1 Corinthians 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three. (v. 13) Theologians use the fancy word perichoresis to describe how the three persons of the Trinity relate to each other. A common definition of that complex word is, “A doctrine of reciprocal inherence.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t say things […]
Helambu Sherpa Language
Words of Hope Nepal is introducing a new broadcast program in the Helambu Sherpa language. Words of Hope’s Nepali ministry director first met a Sherpa pastor in 2013 while visiting the Himalayan region for ministry. The Sherpa pastor shared his own incredible conversion story. How he had gone from being apprenticed to a shaman to […]
False Hope
Read: Psalm 146 Happy are those . . . whose hope is in the Lord their God. (v. 5 NRSV) I wrote in our previous reading about trusting our physicians but not putting our hope in medicine. I want to widen the lens today and ask, “What (or who) else do we trust that we should not put […]
Trust, Hope, Medicine, Death
Read: 1 Corinthians 15:12-28 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. (v. 22) Theologian J. Todd Billings begins his book The End of the Christian Life with this thesis: “Whether you are nineteen or ninety-nine, whether you are healthy or sick, or whether the future looks bright or bleak, […]
Hope Soars
Read: Isaiah 40:21-31 Those who hope in the Lord . . . will soar on wings like eagles. (v. 31 NIV) Hope is the thing with feathers,” Emily Dickinson wrote in what might be her most beloved poem. She makes a bird a metaphor for hope, and goes on to say that hope not only perches in the […]
The Hope of Heaven
Read: 1 Corinthians 15:42-58 We shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (v. 49) I read an article about heaven the morning of the day my father died, having no idea how important that article would become by the end of the day. The author wrote about how the idea of heaven as a […]