Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Hope that Never Dies

"Your current plans are going to succeed." "Your financial investments will yield results far beyond your hopes." "You will achieve your dream of success." We know the giddy feeling we get when we open up a fortune cookie and read a message that encourages us and affirms our hopes. Such words give sheer delight. The burdens and discouragement we may be feeling before the message is revealed are banished ... gone ... at least for a while, and we go forth empowered and sure. But, the messages fade.

Those kind of messages, but ones that do indeed last, are available for us all the time and are more than fortune in the sense of predictions of good luck. They are messages anchored in the Truth that is Eternal, the Love that is Everlasting, and the Hope that Never Dies. These messages are found in the Bible, and I turn to them everyday. I turn to them not for shallow messages of all will be well, but deep messages that All Will Be Well.

In the same way, when God desired to show even more clearly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it by an oath, so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God would prove false, we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us. We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.  Hebrews 6:17-20 (NRSV)