A Reason for Hope

Some days its hard to see beyond the struggle of our daily lives.  It's not always the momentous tasks that weigh us down, it's the little things.  Wake up to the alarm.  Make your bed.  Get to where you need to be on time.  Classes.  Meetings.  All this set against a backdrop of human suffering: families torn apart, parents losing their jobs, depression, terminal illness.  It's not a very bright picture.

In fact, when we focus on these things, we will be bogged down and probably fall into their trap.  But we have been promised that death and it's pain are a grief known only to this world and that we can live for something greater.  These earthly struggles are just a dot on the horizon of a brilliant sunrise.  When we learn to live for eternity, we feel these pains less and less.

Still, it's difficult to understand why God lets us feel these pains at all.  Although I do not think there is any neat answer to this question, I do know that God has a way of changing some of the most painful things in the world into beautiful pictures of His glory and our redemption.

I say this not because this is how I hope God is.  I know this to be true because of the cross.  Crucifixion was the Roman art of killing people in the most painful, gruesome way possible.  The process was created with the goal of torturing victims and terrifying onlookers.  How much more awful it must have been to see, not a hardened criminal, but an innocent man die this way.

And yet, is it not the cross that has saved us?  It was then that the curtain was torn between the part of the temple where the people were allowed and the part where God was.  The symbolism was clear: because of the cross, we can all have access to God.

The fact that God can take something as horrible as crucifixion and make it into something so beautiful speaks volumes of who He is.  It is our reason for hope, both in this life and the next.  We serve a God who makes life from death.

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