WHY CHRISTIAN HOPE?

If one single word is used to describe the foundation upon which the whole Christian life is based, it is HOPE. Hope is the main theme running throughout the heart of the Bible, from Genesis down to Revelation. Without this hope, Christian life is nothing but an illusion and pitiful, we are deceiving ourselves. God offers us the hope repeatedly reinforced through Abraham, down to the prophets, and finally in Jesus Christ his only Son, is that we are to share his eternal life.

We labour hard in this present life, children going to schools, students studying hard, young couples working tirelessly…, it is because of the hope in a better future. Abraham left his home for a distant land that he didn’t know about, it was because his hope in God’s promise to him that God would make of him a great nation and that through him all peoples would be blessed. Hope is future oriented and an inbuilt nature of humanity alone, not found in the animal kingdom.

Hope helps us to weather our daily struggle and trial because our daily hardship doesn’t have the last word, but hope does. It is the shining beacon in the midst of darkness. It encourages and energises the struggling people for a brighter horizon.

When warning his disciples about his looming suffering and death, Jesus’ disciples were disheartened. They felt heavy and hopeless. The transfiguration of Jesus aims to strengthen his disciples’ faith in the anticipation of the passion. He showed them for a moment his glorious body when knowing that this body was going to be tortured and put to death. Death doesn’t have the last word, his glorious Easter does, the glory to which we are all destined to share.

Christian hope is eschatological, it is the end time related hope that “those who stand firm to the end will be saved.”(Mat 24:13). The Lenten colour is purple, it is the colour of hope.