hope

Last Sunday our friend Maggie invited me to preach at an outdoor worship service she started called Green Chapel. She asked me to share on ‘hope for today.’ Luke 4:14-21 was the passage of focus, zooming in on these mind-bending words of Jesus: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” The following is a collection of thoughts taken from the message.

‘Hope is a seed in the ground waiting for the harvest.’

‘Hope is heavy with expectation, a word weighed down with beauty and confidence.’

‘Hope is most often associated with a day far off…as yet unfulfilled…situated firmly in the future. But Jesus takes what is far off, what is future, and drags it into the present.’

‘Yes, we look forward to going to heaven. But we must remember that heaven has already come to us. Hope is not there and then, but here and now. It is not out there. It is in you.’

‘That’s the thing about hope. It is restless. And it refuses to stay politely put. It first takes root in our deepest places until swelling up and spilling out into every corner of our lives and every corner of our world.’