Concordia Evangelical Lutheran Church
The M3 - Monday Morning Mail
No Hope or Hope?
Both Noah and Abraham exhibit hope when they should have none. Noah is told that the whole earth has become evil, and YHWH is upset. He is going to destroy it all, except for Noah and his family. Eight people enter the ark for forty days of downpouring rain. I described what this must have been like on the ark: all the animals, all the work, communicating with each other on the floating zoo. Day-after-day the rain comes down, drowning all land-based life. Yet, Noah maintains hope, ultimately displayed by YHWH in the giving of the rainbow (Gn 9:13). Similarly, Abram exhibits hope when he should be hopeless. In the far southwest corner of Iraq in Ur, YHWH calls Abram to go where he leads him. YHWH tells Abram that his descendants will be like the stars in the sky. In the dusty corners of the Iraqi desert, Abram has hope because of what YHWH has promised him verbally and visually!
The Apostle Paul tells us that we cannot be like others who have no hope! At this point I showed an image of a girl with hopeless eyes. The reason is straightforward: Christ is coming back and coming down to make new all that he has made! I then contrasted the first girl with that of a girl who has hope-filled eyes, quoting 1 Thessalonians 4:17-18: “17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.” The promise of Scripture is that Jesus will come back and down to remove the effect of the curse YHWH puts on creation in Genesis 3. Sin evokes this curse of YHWH, yet Jesus has become that curse for us to remove its eternal effects. Our vocation until he comes again: to repent, to hear the promise of Jesus, and be hopeful, calling others to join us on on the way!