For Jesus, God had a plan for the recovery and renewal of all people on earth, and his mission was - he believed and staked his life on this - to initiate that plan to bring in the fullness of the kingdom of God.

If Alvin Toffler, author of The Third Wave, is right, we need that kind of hope more than ever. In the face of chaos all over the world, Toffler insists that we are going through something more drastic than temporary hardship. He believes that we are suffering the "birth pains of a new civilization." Arthur Coxe's verse sounds so contemporary:

We are living, we are dwelling, in a grand and awful time,
In an age on ages telling to be living is sublime.
Hark! the waking up of nations; God and Magog to the fray.
Hark! what soundeth? ‘Tis creation groaning for its latter day.

Hope in God helps us to make sense out of the senseless turn of events in our time, in all time, because hope enables us to endure and to press on in the face of present and impending tragedies, doesn't it? When life confuses us and confounds us, when it seems to make no sense at all, the God who started it all and created all living things, lets us get a glimpse of his glory and power and hope is born in us again.