Safe Hope
Dear Hope Church Family,
Tonight is our Good Friday service, when we enter into one of humanity’s darkest hours, remembering each of Christ’s last words from the cross. Candles will be extinguished to symbolize the darkness of death. Sunday we’ll gather before dawn to light the Paschal candle, representing the light of Christ who has overcome death. In between is Saturday, when the candle is extinguished and left alone in an empty sanctuary, just as Christ was left alone in a tomb, abandoned by so many of his friends and followers and even his own Father. It often seems that we’re living in a Saturday world, where we’ve been abandoned to the ravages of sin and death. Where light and hope have not yet come. Like Mary, I often find myself ready to go to the tomb on Saturday to find death and loss, not willing to hope, not expecting God to act. More willing to believe that my Father really has abandoned us, more willing to believe that Christ has been defeated by death, than to hope.
Because hope is vulnerability. Hope is exposing yourself to the possibility of crushing disappointment. But when Mary found that tomb empty, hope became safe. 1 Peter 1:3b says: “According to his great mercy, [the Father] has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…” Hope came alive and became sure and safe when Christ overcame death. No longer could our hope of God’s unwavering faithfulness be disappointed. Every hope placed in God’s “Never-Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love” (Jesus Storybook Bible) is met. We live in a Saturday world, a world where it often feels like God is quiet, where God’s enemies have won. Yet we are Sunday people who can dare to hope because Christ has risen again, the Father has not left him in the grave, and he will not abandon us.
Sarah
Art by Brandon Gonzales, To the Empty Tomb
