Life's Inanities and Ironies

  Hope is not the opposite of tears. Hope is what keeps tears from becoming the whole language of the future. “…that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” — 1 Thessalonians 4:13 Christian hope is not optimism. Optimism is a weather forecast of the personality. Hope is a promise with a name attached. We are born again to “a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). If the tomb still held Him, Paul says we would be of all people most to be pitied. What happens to those who die in Christ. They are “away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). That intermediate rest is real comfort. It is not the end of the story. The great hope is resurrection: “the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23). Jesus is the firstfruits. His glorified, scarred, recognizable body is the pattern (Philippians 3:20–21). Love is not wasting itself on a person who has been deleted. Reunion will be in a redeemed creation, in bodies that ca...

Oh, can you feel it? That holy hush before the dawn… the moment when heaven itself held its breath. If you are a conservative Christian who still trembles at the King James Bible , who clings to the old rugged cross, the blood that cleanses, and the literal, bodily resurrection of our Lord, then come with me to John chapter 20 .   We have wept through “that last week,” stood trembling in “that last night,” listened with aching hearts to “that final discourse,” and fallen on our faces at “that hour on Calvary .” Now—glory to God!—we stand at **that glorious morning**, the morning that shattered the power of death forever. The tomb is empty. The Lord is risen. And your heart was meant to be set on fire all over again today. Let the Word of the living God break over you like sunrise. 1. The Empty Tomb – “He Is Not Here” (John 20:1-10) Mary Magdalene stumbles through the darkness, her heart still raw from Friday’s horror. The stone is rolled away. She runs, weeping, to Peter and...