Choose Hope

Choose Hope

For the last month at Trinity Community Church we have been doing a sermon series on HOPE.  We recognize that to live a life of hope takes daily participation.  The journey to hope is often through suffering, in which God is present every step of the way.  Hope changes our perspective because we are changed by hope.  And finally, yesterday we studied Deuteronomy 30:15-20 and discussed how hope begins with a CHOICE.

God the Father made a way for us to be brought back in relationship with Him through the work of Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Yet, to receive the gift of salvation it all starts with a decision that each and every one of us has to make.  We must choose hope!

This past week I was blessed to be able to attend the Evangelical Covenant Church’s pastor and leaders’ conference, Midwinter.  Throughout the week this idea of hope and choice weighed heavily on my heart.  The different preachers taught on living life together and the element of choice that is involved in living into the people God has created us to be.

This phenomenon of CHOICE is so intrinsic to our day to day living that I think we often overlook the importance of the options set before us.  We can get caught up in circumstances and forget that we have the ability to participate…for good or for bad.  We forget that “lack of choice” or inaction also plagues our reality.  In choosing not to act we can often have greater impact than we could ever imagine.

So I set before you a challenge: CHOICE your present and your future!  Understand the power given to each of us to participate in our circumstances.  Yes, God’s grace is present and ABUNDANT (for the times we choose wrong, stumble, or inevitable make mistakes)!  We do not earn our relationship with God and we cannot simply choose blessing…YET, let us also not be categorized by inaction.

No one will make me eat right, exercise, see a counselor, seek out a social group, or find a routine that works towards my health, (mind, body, and soul).  No one is going to make me read my bible or take intentional time with God.  I have been given the ability to choose…thus I seek to embrace that CHOICE!

We are offered many things in this life…may we never forget that we are also given the privilege to engage in the process of being made whole.  We are invited into relationship with God.  We are invited into relationship with one another.  And we are invited to choose HOPE.

Have we become silent?

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter." MLK Jr

In honor of a tremendous man who inspired a nation and the world, I would like to take some time to reflect on the example set by Martin Luther King Jr.  The quote above is one of my favors, but more than that it always causes a rumbling in my spirit that pushes me to act.  Why?  Because in honest reflection of my life, I must admit that often I choose to be silent about things that matter.

Like it or not, I exist in a position of power.  I am American, middle-class, and white.  Remaining silent in the face of injustice is easy.  It is comfortable.  It takes no effort or intentional NOT to act.  Sure there are circumstances in which I am the voiceless and marginalized, but I am also aware that I have power and influence.  Therefore to remain silent is to push those in the margins of society further into the shadows. 

Inaction is action, because whether intentional or not my failure to act does not contribute to the reconciliation of the world…it deters it.  Will I seek to hear the voiceless?  Will I fight to empower those who are told they do not have a say?  Will I make space at the table for all points of view to be heard?

Injustice sadly did not end with the civil rights movement.  Injustice is something we must all continue to fight to rectify.  As a person of faith and integrity Martin Luther King Jr fought injustice.  He did not remain silent and he inspired others to speak and act.  “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”  Let us not be silent this day.  May we never be silent.  May we continue to fight injustice and fight for all people to have a voice.

A Proclamation of Hope

This post is dedicated to a dear friend, mentor, and teacher.  His lessons of love, compassion, faith, justice, reconciliation and ministry will forever and always impact my life.  I know you are face to face with Jesus, Richard.  But we miss you already.

This past week I had the opportunity to be the speaker at Covenant Park Bible Camp in Mahtowa, MN.  It was a privilege to share the gospel with a bunch of junior highers and see how God was intersecting and impacting their stories.  Throughout the week I kept reiterating the truth, “We were not meant for brokenness and we were not made for death!”  We experience both this side of the Eschaton, but that is not the end of our stories.  We are not defined by death because there is hope for wholeness, reconciliation, healing and life found in Christ.  As one theologian once put it, “We experience the full brunt of death in this life.  We feel the pain, loss, and outrage.  But the gospel points us towards hope in the midst of that heartache.”

There were times this week when I was overwhelmed by the pain and suffering that these young people had or were experiencing.  Parental suicide, cancer, substance abuse, broken families…so much death and brokenness woven into their lives.  And what about God?  Where is He in all this?  Why the brokenness?  For these questions I want to speak against the standard Christian responses that try to explain away pain.  God is not a crutch in the midst of this hurting; He is not allowing these afflictions as part of His divine plan.  It is not His will that we experience death.  NO!  God is outraged at their pain!  He is weeping for their suffering.  It was NOT His intention to stick these kids into shitty situations and see how that would impact their faith.  He never created us to experience brokenness.  His plan for our lives was and has always been life and life with Him.  He sent His Son to die on the cross so that redemption could break into the reality of death and transform the fallen nature of this world. 

God has given us the freedom to walk towards Him or walk away from Him.  In that autonomy brokenness entered the world.  We experience brokenness we choice for ourselves and the consequences of others brokenness.  But Christ was never a backup plan.  God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, always intended a way for all humanity and creation to come back into relationship with Him.  Back to life and life to the full.  But in the midst of the plan of redemption and the Kingdom of life coming near we still experience the full brunt of death.

But death is not the end of our story.  God is with us in our pain, our loss, our outrage, our suffering.  There is hope for the present, but ultimate hope for all that has been broken to be set right.  That is the message of the gospel.  That is the hope I pray those kids take home with them….Then today, as I prepared to reflect on this past week I received the news that my friend Richard passed away.  Instantly I was filled with outrage, pain, a sense of loss as an amazing and faithful man was taken too soon from this world.  I know he is with God.  I know death does not define his ultimate story.  But today I am again overwhelmed by the brokenness of the world.  I weep for the loss of a friend.  I weep and am outraged that death is part of our human experience.

I pray for Richard’s wife, for his children, his family, his friends, and all those who are impacted by his death.  I pray that God would meet them in their pain and give them peace and comfort.  I pray that hope would break into the reality of death.  We are not meant for brokenness…we are not meant for death.  Our story will one day be defined by life, redemption, healing, reconciliation, and wholeness…in the meanwhile I pray our stories would be defined by the hope and promise of life found in God.  In the face of death I proclaim hope…not to nullify the experience of death, not to explain it away or lessen the loss, but to remember that this is not the end of our stories.

A Proclamation of Hope

This post is dedicated to a dear friend, mentor, and teacher.  His lessons of love, compassion, faith, justice, reconciliation and ministry will forever and always impact my life.  I know you are face to face with Jesus, Richard.  But we miss you already.

This past week I had the opportunity to be the speaker at Covenant Park Bible Camp in Mahtowa, MN.  It was a privilege to share the gospel with a bunch of junior highers and see how God was intersecting and impacting their stories.  Throughout the week I kept reiterating the truth, “We were not meant for brokenness and we were not made for death!”  We experience both this side of the Eschaton, but that is not the end of our stories.  We are not defined by death because there is hope for wholeness, reconciliation, healing and life found in Christ.  As one theologian once put it, “We experience the full brunt of death in this life.  We feel the pain, loss, and outrage.  But the gospel points us towards hope in the midst of that heartache.”

There were times this week when I was overwhelmed by the pain and suffering that these young people had or were experiencing.  Parental suicide, cancer, substance abuse, broken families…so much death and brokenness woven into their lives.  And what about God?  Where is He in all this?  Why the brokenness?  For these questions I want to speak against the standard Christian responses that try to explain away pain.  God is not a crutch in the midst of this hurting; He is not allowing these afflictions as part of His divine plan.  It is not His will that we experience death.  NO!  God is outraged at their pain!  He is weeping for their suffering.  It was NOT His intention to stick these kids into shitty situations and see how that would impact their faith.  He never created us to experience brokenness.  His plan for our lives was and has always been life and life with Him.  He sent His Son to die on the cross so that redemption could break into the reality of death and transform the fallen nature of this world. 

God has given us the freedom to walk towards Him or walk away from Him.  In that autonomy brokenness entered the world.  We experience brokenness we choice for ourselves and the consequences of others brokenness.  But Christ was never a backup plan.  God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, always intended a way for all humanity and creation to come back into relationship with Him.  Back to life and life to the full.  But in the midst of the plan of redemption and the Kingdom of life coming near we still experience the full brunt of death.

But death is not the end of our story.  God is with us in our pain, our loss, our outrage, our suffering.  There is hope for the present, but ultimate hope for all that has been broken to be set right.  That is the message of the gospel.  That is the hope I pray those kids take home with them….Then today, as I prepared to reflect on this past week I received the news that my friend Richard passed away.  Instantly I was filled with outrage, pain, a sense of loss as an amazing and faithful man was taken too soon from this world.  I know he is with God.  I know death does not define his ultimate story.  But today I am again overwhelmed by the brokenness of the world.  I weep for the loss of a friend.  I weep and am outraged that death is part of our human experience.

I pray for Richard’s wife, for his children, his family, his friends, and all those who are impacted by his death.  I pray that God would meet them in their pain and give them peace and comfort.  I pray that hope would break into the reality of death.  We are not meant for brokenness…we are not meant for death.  Our story will one day be defined by life, redemption, healing, reconciliation, and wholeness…in the meanwhile I pray our stories would be defined by the hope and promise of life found in God.  In the face of death I proclaim hope…not to nullify the experience of death, not to explain it away or lessen the loss, but to remember that this is not the end of our stories.

A Proclamation of Hope

This post is dedicated to a dear friend, mentor, and teacher.  His lessons of love, compassion, faith, justice, reconciliation and ministry will forever and always impact my life.  I know you are face to face with Jesus, Richard.  But we miss you already.

This past week I had the opportunity to be the speaker at Covenant Park Bible Camp in Mahtowa, MN.  It was a privilege to share the gospel with a bunch of junior highers and see how God was intersecting and impacting their stories.  Throughout the week I kept reiterating the truth, “We were not meant for brokenness and we were not made for death!”  We experience both this side of the Eschaton, but that is not the end of our stories.  We are not defined by death because there is hope for wholeness, reconciliation, healing and life found in Christ.  As one theologian once put it, “We experience the full brunt of death in this life.  We feel the pain, loss, and outrage.  But the gospel points us towards hope in the midst of that heartache.”

There were times this week when I was overwhelmed by the pain and suffering that these young people had or were experiencing.  Parental suicide, cancer, substance abuse, broken families…so much death and brokenness woven into their lives.  And what about God?  Where is He in all this?  Why the brokenness?  For these questions I want to speak against the standard Christian responses that try to explain away pain.  God is not a crutch in the midst of this hurting; He is not allowing these afflictions as part of His divine plan.  It is not His will that we experience death.  NO!  God is outraged at their pain!  He is weeping for their suffering.  It was NOT His intention to stick these kids into shitty situations and see how that would impact their faith.  He never created us to experience brokenness.  His plan for our lives was and has always been life and life with Him.  He sent His Son to die on the cross so that redemption could break into the reality of death and transform the fallen nature of this world. 

God has given us the freedom to walk towards Him or walk away from Him.  In that autonomy brokenness entered the world.  We experience brokenness we choice for ourselves and the consequences of others brokenness.  But Christ was never a backup plan.  God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, always intended a way for all humanity and creation to come back into relationship with Him.  Back to life and life to the full.  But in the midst of the plan of redemption and the Kingdom of life coming near we still experience the full brunt of death.

But death is not the end of our story.  God is with us in our pain, our loss, our outrage, our suffering.  There is hope for the present, but ultimate hope for all that has been broken to be set right.  That is the message of the gospel.  That is the hope I pray those kids take home with them….Then today, as I prepared to reflect on this past week I received the news that my friend Richard passed away.  Instantly I was filled with outrage, pain, a sense of loss as an amazing and faithful man was taken too soon from this world.  I know he is with God.  I know death does not define his ultimate story.  But today I am again overwhelmed by the brokenness of the world.  I weep for the loss of a friend.  I weep and am outraged that death is part of our human experience.

I pray for Richard’s wife, for his children, his family, his friends, and all those who are impacted by his death.  I pray that God would meet them in their pain and give them peace and comfort.  I pray that hope would break into the reality of death.  We are not meant for brokenness…we are not meant for death.  Our story will one day be defined by life, redemption, healing, reconciliation, and wholeness…in the meanwhile I pray our stories would be defined by the hope and promise of life found in God.  In the face of death I proclaim hope…not to nullify the experience of death, not to explain it away or lessen the loss, but to remember that this is not the end of our stories.