... in participating in that sacred meal, Sara Miles has made a radical change in her life. For one thing, she has opened food pantries all over San Francisco. She’s taking her faith to the streets, ministering to the poor and homeless with food and comfort and the hope she found when she found God. (6) God did not intend for us to waste our lives chasing after lesser pleasures. Eternal life, both in this world and the world to come, is God’s greatest gift to us. So what does a focus on eternal life do ...
... Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Who can doubt that this is the most important statement in all of literature? And of course, the cross and the empty tomb must forever remain at the center of our faith. Without the Easter event we have no salvation and no hope. But how would we know about the manger and how would we know about the cross and the empty tomb if it were not for Pentecost when the wind of God blew and the church was born? Who would have protected the Holy Scriptures with its very life if ...
... home to resume what they imagined would be a very different life. Their grief allowed them in that moment a narrow lens. All they could see was blue and grey. They were sad; they were downhearted; they were convinced that life had lost its color. Their hope for a more beautiful world was dashed. As they stared at the ground, kicking at the dust as they walked, they barely noticed the stranger coming up beside them. Consumed in their grief, they hardly gave him a glance. When he asked them what was wrong ...
... , side by side, could ask follow up questions to all they saw, could have casual table talk about the events of the day, and could watch the non-verbal communication that often gives the truer meaning to the words, and they couldn’t get it, what hope is there for us? For me the hope is that Jesus starts first with the promise. A place is prepared for us. Second, he doesn’t turn on those who still haven’t got it, he attempts again, “if you have seen me and what I do, you have seen the Father, and if ...
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.
I never enter a new company without the hope that I may discover a friend, perhaps the friend, sitting there with an expectant smile. That hope survives a thousand disappointments.
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake.
Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.
Duty, Honor, Country – those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.
I place no hope in my strength, nor in my works: but all my confidence is in God my protector, who never abandons those who have put all their hope and thought in him.
A man must love a thing very much if he not only practises it without any hope of fame and money, but even practises it without any hope of doing it well.