In our home, resting quietly on my wife’s dresser, is a very important document – a signed copy of her contract with the school district to teach Kindergarten next year. For weeks before she received this paper, Susan was on pins and needles, not sure the job would ever be hers. During that time of uncertainty, she made a comment to me. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
She said, “It’s awful to hope and yet be unsure that what you want will ever be yours.” I’m not quoting her exactly, but it was something close to that. She then talked about the many religious people in this world who live with that kind of unsure hope. Muslims who look to the Koran find no sure hope. They can’t know until after death whether all their good works and rule following will convince Allah to grant them a home in paradise. Hindus and Buddhists find the same ambiguity in their founders’ teachings. They are unsure, even if they are devout, that they will reach the state of Nirvana when they die. They may be reincarnated again a dozen times – maybe a hundred times for all they know – before they escape life’s recycling process.
Friends, only believers in Jesus Christ have a sure hope, like the kind my wife has now looking at her signed contract. Susan is not the Kindergarten teacher yet, but she will be. She’s sure of it. We aren’t in heaven yet, but we will be. We can be sure of it. God has promised it to all who believe.
April’s celebrations of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are all about the sure hope we have. Rejoice in God’s goodness. Sin has been dealt with. Eternal life is available.
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