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believers, Christ-like, Christianity, Compassion, disciples, Easter, faithfulness, followers of Christ, freedom, God, Good News, Haiti, Hope, Jesus, Love, ministry, missions, new life, overcoming, prayer, religion, Ressurection Sunday, salvation, the cross, the gosple, vision, wisdom
We all long for hope. It is the one thing that helps us carry on. But sometimes hope defies us. Sometimes hope seems hopeless. Sometimes hope eludes us.
The hardest thing is to hope for something unseen or to gaze upon a reality that defies everything your soul says is Truth. When something you wholehearted believe in or commit your life to suddenly disappears, appears to be false or is torn away–how do you find the hope to carry on?
Sorrow, grief and bitterness are the hardest crosses to bear. And yet out of our pain and suffering comes a steadfast perseverance and the kind of faith that can never be shaken. Life experiences make us stronger and give us the wisdom and the compassion which enables us to help others and to find purpose in our own path.
Want to be more Christ-like? Consider how He suffered. Out of our own experiences only can we truly relate to others.
In Haiti, just a few days after the earthquake, I met a college student from Canada who came to volunteer. He was not a first responder or a medical student. He didn’t know if he had any skills that could be used. He only knew he had to be somewhere where people were suffering just as badly as he was. It was his only way to get past his own pain. His younger sister had recently died in a car crash and he was totally lost without her. Haiti and helping others helped to heal his wounds.
I also met a paramedic from the Bronx who had been on the scene dragging people out of the World Trade Towers as they fell. His last rescue barely made it onto the street by just a few feet. He told the story of how he fell to his knees and punched the roadway until the cement tore through his knuckles and then he screamed at God–both thankful he had been spared and full of angst at what he had just experienced. In that moment, he decided to recommit his life to God and to spend the rest of his life responding to disasters and helping others.
Not every story is this traumatic but every life story does have its share of shock and pain and suffering–and it has its moments of joy, and peace and hope. Hang onto the hope. It is what will free you from the past. It is what will allow you to find the joy and contentment of the day. It is what enables you to enter the future with dreams and plans and promise.
Hang onto hope the way the early followers of Jesus did–especially the faithful women who stood at the foot of the cross for three days until He emerged from the grave and presented Himself to Mary. Yes . . . he arose. Even though one denied Him and another had to actually touch the nail holes in His hands–He gave them tangible evidence that their hope was not in vain.
Signs of hope are everywhere but too often we don’t see them. It takes a special eye–a discerning eye. It takes an eye and an ear and a heart that looks for signs. It takes a person who is acutely aware of their surroundings–one who is on a mission to find the good in every situation, the potential in every person and the joy in everything. There is hope and promise for those who choose to believe. There is purpose and healing for those who rise up from their sadness and suffering and then use that experience to reach out and help others.
This to me is the greatest message of the cross and of Easter. If we look only to the cross instead of the Resurrection we stay stuck on our redemption rather than our calling to walk out our salvation.
We already know the long-told message that Jesus was a threat to the government and to the religious leaders of His day and how His own disciple sold Him out for a sack full of silver and how He went to the cross and died for our sins so we could be free and reunited with our Creator–but do we ever contemplate or find the hope of our own Resurrection Sunday as a chance to rise up and become more Christ-like in the way we walk and talk and impact others in our daily lives?
For the disciples and those who followed Jesus to his death, the challenge was to have enough faith to believe He would rise up from the grave–that the tomb couldn’t hold Him. For those who experienced a risen Lord, the challenge was to share the Good News.
For me, having the vision to see beyond the cross is to accept the calling to walk out my salvation and to share hope and Good News to others.
You get to choose what Easter means to you.
This Easter contemplate the hope of what Jesus did for you on the cross but don’t leave him hanging there–look at how He rose up and made His presence known to those who would carry on His teachings and do as He did on earth.
“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” LUKE 10:2 (NIV)
Will you be satisfied in knowing Jesus died for you or will you be among the few who rise up and take that message with you by committing your life to being a modern day disciple going out into the world to fulfill His great commission of sharing the gospel and planting seeds of hope into the lives of others?
Walking out your salvations means the choice is always up to you.