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HOPE Daily Devotional: Dec 5


Cultivate hope each day this week.

December 5: Hope for the Future

  • Scripture: Revelation 21:4 — [God] will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away
  • Meditation: Our hope looks forward to a future, one that includes an existence beyond suffering. This is fundamental to the hope of heaven beyond this mortal life. Such a vision of life beyond death is a promise of the kingdom of God at its best, and isn’t part of our regular human experience. Yet there is comfort in the belief that beyond this mortal existence, we anticipate a way of being in the presence of God that comes without pain and suffering.
    At the same time, we are asked, as Christ modeled it for us, to care for and relieve the suffering and improve the circumstances of people around us in here and now, during our lifetime. We are asked to be of service to others. By doing what we’re able, we look toward something better, and contribute toward it here on earth.
  • Spiritual Practice: Write a prayer, poem, or song that expresses your hopes for a better world.

SONGS:

Book Club Discussion: Surprised by Hope by Rachel Held Evans (excerpt)
…  illustrates NT Wright’s point that “a massive assumption has been made in Western Christianity that the purpose of being a Christian is simply, or at least mainly, ‘to go to heaven when you die.’” (90) … Instead, Wright believes that “the gospel, in the New Testament, is the good news that God (the world’s creator) is at last becoming king and that Jesus, whom this God has raised from the dead, is the world’s true lord.” (227)Knowing that Jesus is lord, and following Him as a result, can have profound effects not only on eternity, but also on every day life.Regarding salvation, Wright says, “as long as we see salvation in terms of going to heaven when we die, the main work of the church is bound to be seen in terms of saving souls for that future. But when we see salvation, as the New Testament sees it, in terms of God’s promised new heavens and new earth and of our promised resurrection to share in that new and gloriously embodied reality…then the main work of the church here and now demands to be rethought in consequence…

…When God saves people in this life by working through his Spirit to bring them to faith and by leading them to follow Jesus in discipleship, prayer, holiness, hope, and love, such people are designed…to be a sign and foretaste of what God wants to do for the entire cosmos. What’s more, such people are not just to be a sign and foretaste of that ultimate salvation; they are to be part of the means by which God makes this happen both in the present and the future.”

… ends with Jesus … reminding the audience that Jesus (the real thing) is indeed Lord of all and that if we follow him by caring for the poor and working for justice, we can provide the world with little snapshots of what is to come.

HOPE Daily Devotional: Dec 5
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