Hope is a quality that lives shadowed by hopelessness in many corners of our world today. St. Paul assured the world that, along with faith and love, hope endures for eternity. (Corinthians 13:13) Hope motivates human beings to pursue the thing hoped for, and the Bible asserts that hope originates in God: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future,” (Jeremiah 29:11) These are words of God sent to a people in exile who had no source of hope but in the words of their God. The condition of their lives was bereft of any visible, tangible hope of returning to their homeland but the words of hope entered and renewed them. For thousands of years believers in God have turned to this scripture for the hope that it promises.

Hope is grasped by the Psalmist who expressed the life-giving hope of God: I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in His word I put my hope. . .Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love, and with Him is full redemption. ( Psalm 130:5&7) The fact that hope comes from God means that it carries with it eternity. Paul wrote that hope “endures” because it comes from God Himself.

When Corrie Ten Boom was in a prison in Germany during World War II, she and all the other women in her section were ordered to stand at attention out doors on a very cold morning wearing only the thin cotton dresses they had been given. The were ordered to stand at attention for more than an hour. Many of the women collapsed but Corrie stood, and silently prayed. Suddenly she heard above her head the song of a meadow lark. The bird flew back and forth over the enclosure for some length of time, and Corrie was reminded of Jesus. She never doubted that the Holy Spirit had visited that very desolate place that morning. It gave her hope in Him. In fact, she finally did leave the prison , and became a world wide missionary of the hope in Christ.

Hope is a wellspring given us by God, by which we find strength to endure hardships and anticipate joy and goodness. Paul wrote that hope endures because it comes from God. If so, then hope can be a gift we may ask of God. “ In that day (after the resurrection) you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father Himself loves you because you have loved me” (John 16:26,27) In times like ours we would not go wrong to ask our God for hope.

Love in Him,

Prue

When I got married my mother told me that sometimes I would hear myself say something that I didn’t usually say, but that Jack usually said. “Don’t be afraid,” my mother said, It’s simply that you share some of his character, as he will share yours. You haven’t lost yourself, but you have made room for someone you love in your life.”

The New Testament contains many references to Jesus as a bridegroom to the believing church. John the Baptist, in explaining his relationship to Jesus, said, “The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is complete.” (John 3:29)

In the Old Testament God made known His desire and plan for a close and intimate relationship with the beings He had made in His own image: “I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.” (Jeremiah 24:7) It is this very intimacy that happens in marriage that God seeks throughout both the Old and the New Testaments. It is a union that produces saints among ordinary people, individuals who converse with the Spirit of God in a real way. It is the delight of His heart, and His plan since creation to commune with human beings.

St. Paul’s conversion is one of the most dramatic examples of God fulfilling His ancient promise to “give them a heart to know Him.” Paul’s entire life was changed on the road to Damascus, and the change was so rewarding that in spite of almost continual hardships, Paul could joyfully assert, “He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done, but because of His own purpose and grace.” (2Timothy 1:9) His own purpose has never changed, for as the Psalmist wrote jubilantly, His love endures forever. (Psalm 136:1)

In the book of Revelations, Saint John wrote, “One of the seven angels . . . came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. ‘” (Revelation 21:9) From the beginning, to the middle, to the end of the Bible comes the message of God’s love that yearns to communicate with us and to be loved in return. When we’re not afraid, we have only to open our hearts to make room for our bridegroom.

Love in Him,

Prue

Easter brought us the sweetness of candy, of lilies, colored eggs, and family gatherings. Most of all it brought the knowledge that regrets for our sins have been washed away, and though we can remember them, they no longer have tags of sadness or disappointment , but they carry sign-posts of joy that Someone Else has carried them away.

King David once wrote, “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” ( Psalm 51:3,4) David’s sin broke two of the ten commandments : Do not commit adultery, and Do not kill. He had ordered the murder of Bathsheba’s husband in order to have her for himself. David understood that though we sin against each other, the truth is that all morality comes from God and so all violations are against Him.

In the late 1960’s and 70’s Frank Sinatra sang the popular song, “My Way”, which contained the words, “ Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention,”as if not mentioning them would somehow make them disappear. In later years Sinatra disliked singing this song, but it was one of his most popular hits.

The world would like to believe that simply by not mentioning our “regrets” we can be rid of them. We can somehow bury our sins until they are forgotten by others and even ourselves, except when we’re reminded of them unexpectedly. King David’s sin was enough to destroy a lesser man but David knew his God better than most of us know Him. David’s psalm continues: Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow. . . Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a clean heart O God, and renew a steadfast spirit in me.

(Psalm 51:7&10)

Many people believe that there is no one but ourselves who can remove guilt from our own consciences, but David knew, even before the birth of Jesus , that there is no one but God who could actually create a clean heart in us. When Jesus gathered up the heinous sins of human beings and had them nailed through his body to the cross, Jesus, David’s descendant and God’s son, made it possible for us to enter the family of God as His own children, because He has removed our sins. It is a gift too much to comprehend, but we have spiritual pilgrims who have gone before us to put a path at our feet. The apostle John wrote, following Jesus’ resurrection, This is how we know that we live in Him, and He in us: He has given us of his Spirit. (1John4:13) His Spirit is sinless. No regrets.

Love in Him,

Prue

To the Lord’s people God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27) St Paul wrote these words to the church in Colossae, a place he had never visited. Paul himself was in prison in Rome awaiting his trial before Caesar.

When I was growing up I and my siblings talked sometimes about our maternal grandfather, who lived in the state of Washington. We lived in upstate New York, never saw our grandfather; but we had a photograph of him in his army uniform sitting casually with one hand resting on his knee. It was a posture identical to one that I often saw in my brother, whose middle name was also my grandfather’s name. I thought that these things meant that Grandpa was certainly part of us, even though we never saw him. Sometimes our older cousins would comment that our brother looked like our grandpa.

Whenever a child is born the relatives are quick to discern who that child “favors.” Everyone wants to see himself or herself in an infant’s face and form. “He has his fathers’ height.” “She has her mother’s red hair.” To find ourselves in another is an irresistible temptation. There is something glorious in being an indelible part of a family, possessing a permanent place at the holiday table.

When Paul wrote to the Colossians, a group of mostly Gentiles who had been converted by the preaching of Paul’s friend Epraphras , Paul was recognizing in them their mutual brother in Jesus. He was reaffirming for them that the Christ they had experienced and accepted lived in them as well as in Paul himself, and that the connection was a glorious one surpassing all other connections among people.

To the Galations Paul wrote about this new reality: So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. . . There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male of female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

(Galatians 3:26,28,27) Jesus removes our need to trace our ancestry in our predecessors. He literally conveys upon us a truer heredity: the spiritual heredity of our brother Christ. When we are his, we participate in the glory of God Himself.

Love in Him,

Prue

With one of his very last breaths while on the cross, Jesus spoke to and of his mother: When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman here is your son,” and to the disciple, “here is your mother.” (John 19:25) There can be no doubt at all about the depth of Jesus’ love for his mother Mary, and his caring for her.

Yet, in the book of Luke Jesus makes some astonishing remarks: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26) In at least three translations of the Bible the word “hate” is used in this passage, and is jarring to read from the lips of the one who spoke so often about love. When I read Jesus’ words recently I thought that he must surely mean that attachments can be so very strong that they distract us from our real foundation, our very Creator.

Jesus understood love, and spoke of it strongly: …an expert in the law tested him with a question: “teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. . . and the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39) Jesus knew that if the first love lived in us, the second would easily follow. The apostle John wrote, “God is love. . . There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.

Jesus insisted that “other loves” not obscure our first love. Rather, John also wrote, We love because He first loved us. (1John 4 ;16&19) John recorded one of the strongest expressions of love from Jesus to his disciple Peter. It happened on the beach following Jesus’ resurrection. Three times Jesus asked Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me? (John 21:15) and three times Peter reaffirmed his love for Jesus. Each time he questioned Peter, he followed with the direction, “Feed my sheep.” Jesus enabled Peter to reaffirm his real love for Jesus after Peter’s denying him three times; but even more, Jesus gave Peter a vocation, “ Feed my sheep.” Peter knew that he had a place in Jesus’ kingdom, in his very ministry, established on the rock of Peter’s love forJesus, a love that always came first in Peter for the rest of his life.

Love in Him,

Prue

West of Jerusalem, between Mispeh and Shen, in the territory of Benjamin, the prophet Samuel erected a large rock. It was to be a memory stone that Samuel named “Ebenezer,” for the people of Israel; for, Samuel said, “ Thus far the Lord has helped us” (1 Samuel 7:12) It was a dramatic and enduring reminder to the people that their well being and safety had been secured by the hand of God when the Philistines had attacked them. It was an acknowledgment of the Israelites’ unique relationship with their God, who was indeed their shield and protection. It was a valuable gesture of remembrance, and it required a prophet of God to establish it for the people.

The truth was that Israel had been devastatingly defeated by the Philistines prior to their most recent victory. Samuel had told them that they must abandon all other gods if they hoped for help from their God, and, perhaps surprisingly, the entire nation responded: Then all the nation turned back to the Lord, so Samuel said to all the Israelites: “If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods. . . and commit yourselves to the Lord, and serve Him only. Then He will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.” So the Israelites put away their Baals and Ashtoreths , and served the Lord only. 1Samuel 7:3-4)

Samuel’s Ebenezer meant more to the Israelites than a simple tribute to their God. It acknowledged the abandonment of “other gods” that had been a pervasive temptation to the people since before their arrival in the Promised Land. “Ebenezer” testified to the need to consciously reject the idols of all other peoples around them. The Ebenezer was a tangible reminder of the One who had brought them out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and had recently rescued them from what could have been a very bruising battle with the Philistines. Ebenezer was a call to humility, a sign that the nation was not self-sufficient, but dependent upon a God they could know from their own past with the help of their prophet Samuel.

I believe that the message is true today as well as then. Our God has made Himself available through His son Jesus, but many preoccupations stand between us and a close relationship with Him. God looks for us to make time to turn to Him, He is the God of all life, and the time we spend with Him is time He cherishes. He has loved us thus far, even before the time of Ebenezer.

Love in Him,

Prue

If we are not faithful, he remains faithful, because he cannot be false to himself. ( 2 Timothy 2:13) This is the only use of the word “cannot” in reference to the risen Jesus in all of the New Testament. The words are St. Paul’s to his much loved co-worker Timothy, written from Paul’s prison cell in Rome. In spite of all the adversity Paul had experienced and all that Timothy was experiencing in Ephesus, Paul expressed the faithfulness of Christ to his own people, even if they had begun to lose their faith in Him.

Jesus’ risen “self” will always be mysterious to us, but Paul makes clear a steadfastness in Jesus that is celebrated and experienced by Moses and David among others of the Old Testament, even before Christ’s resurrection: Not to us, not to us, but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness. (Psalm 115:1) Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 22-23)

The great faithfulness of God is what strengthened Jesus to face his adversaries all the way to the cross. It is the glue that holds together those who are pressed hard by circumstances and griefs. Paul knew that it did not originate in human beings, but in God Himself. He bestowed it as part of His character upon those capable of believing, and and even those whose belief was weak or wavering.

The airman who was rescued from a crevice in a cliff in Iran spoke his faith on seeing his American rescuers . His first words were, “God is good.” God’s goodness is conveyed in His faithfulness, a faithfulness that He looks for in His people. St. Paul recognized that it originated not in himself, but in God: He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done, but because of His own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior. (2Timothy 1:9-10)

It can be hard to believe things we cannot see and touch, but God supplies the means for us to believe in giving us His son, who was seen and touched by many. In this God kept faith so that those who believe would know that it is not in ourselves, but in Him where faith resides. It is a gift we can ask for and receive.

Love in Him,

Prue

Sing to the Lord, for He has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world. Shout aloud, and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel. ( Isaiah 12:5-6)

These words of the prophet Isaiah are fulfilled in our own generation every time we sing the hymns of praise in church and in our hearts wherever we may be. The resurrection of Jesus we celebrate today fulfills Old Testament prophesy as well as the yearning of all human hearts for loving connection that holds no fear of ending: Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ comes, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (1 John, 3:2)

Those closest to Jesus knew at the resurrection of Jesus, that the world would never be the same. A new life and a hope had been injected into the human condition, and as its origin was from our eternal God, that life and that hope in us would share eternity with our brother Jesus. No ordinary human could have accomplished this salvation of human beings, but our Father God chose to make a difference in the universe in order that we, his children, could be re-united with Him. It is love from beginning to end, and in this case, the love does not have an end.

That we will some day be like Jesus doesn’t mean that we will each lose our own identity, but that the truths that we have read coming from Jesus will be our truths, and that his Holy Spirit will be our companion as He is Jesus’ companion. It means more than we can understand today, but much that we can perceive in reading his Book: They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus… Suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightening stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he is risen.”

There is mystery in all of life, but the joy about which Isaiah leads us to shout and sing, is ours, expressed even more fully in the empty tomb which we remember today: “Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things.” “He is not in the tomb, for He is risen!”

Happy, Happy Easter!

Love in Him,

Prue

During Holy Week, the words of Isaiah the prophet, spoken more than seven hundred years before Jesus was born, speak to us more than two thousand years after Jesus’ crucifixion: Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord had laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before the shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper his hand. After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied;by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intersession for their transgressions. ( Isaiah 53: 2-12)

This immortal passage from Isaiah breathes the very breath of Holy Week. In it the prophet foresees the coming of the Christ, and his suffering on the cross, and even his resurrection. Isaiah also reports that they, the Holy people, will misunderstand, and kill the very one sent to them by their God. Isaiah also emphasizes that God’s “righteous servant” will perform for all human beings: After he has suffered he will see the light of life and be satisfied.” That light we will celebrate on Easter Sunday.

Love in Him,

Prue

Throughout history any triumphant kings and heroes have returned from conquests to a great celebration of cheers and waving flags and shouts of adoration. In the first century a carpenter’s son was greeted in Jerusalem with great excitement and celebration for being the son of David, and the son of God.

Today we don’t re-create triumphal entries of Caesar or Napoleon, or King David, but more than too thousand years after the event, we gather to celebrate with waving palm branches, the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. The church of a friend of mine celebrates by parading around their parking lot waving palm branches to the music of bagpipes and a drum.

Palm Sunday was the trigger that led the leaders of the temple in Jerusalem to plot the death of Jesus. It was also the affirmation of Jesus’ real identity to the world. Openly and loudly Jesus was affirmed as David’s son, and the son of God. The people who shouted “Hosanna” at the sight of Jesus were his own disciples and by-standers and children. The news of the raising of Lazarus had reached Jerusalem: Now the crowd that was with Jesus when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him. (John 12:17-18)

“This sign” was the signal to many that Jesus was in fact the long hoped for Messiah, the one who would restore to Israel it’s unique relationship with God. The ones who longed the most perhaps, were children, a truth that Jesus acknowledged when he was rebuked by members of the Sanhedrin: “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him. “Yes,” replied Jesus. Have you never heard, ‘From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise.’ (Psalm 8:2)

The fact is that the “sign” was recognized by some common people, some friends of Lazarus , the disciples of Jesus, and children, but not by the Sanhedrin. The “sign” of Palm Sunday was the presence of God’s holiness in everything Jesus did and said, from the colt that had never been ridden, to the voices of children, and the cloaks on the road and the palms being waved. On this day we, too, recognize the sign.

Love in Him,

Prue