Trust, Hope, Medicine, Death
Read: 1 Corinthians 15:12-28 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. (v. 22) Theologian J. Todd Billings begins his book The End of the Christian Life with this thesis: “Whether you are nineteen or ninety-nine, whether you are healthy or sick, or whether the future looks bright or bleak, […]
Hope Soars
Read: Isaiah 40:21-31 Those who hope in the Lord . . . will soar on wings like eagles. (v. 31 NIV) Hope is the thing with feathers,” Emily Dickinson wrote in what might be her most beloved poem. She makes a bird a metaphor for hope, and goes on to say that hope not only perches in the […]
The Hope of Heaven
Read: 1 Corinthians 15:42-58 We shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (v. 49) I read an article about heaven the morning of the day my father died, having no idea how important that article would become by the end of the day. The author wrote about how the idea of heaven as a […]
Lament and Hope
Read: Psalm 102:1-22 My heart is stricken and withered like grass. (v. 4 NRSV) My father died while I was working on this set of devotions. Although he lived to be 91, and although he had been declining the past several months, his death came as a surprise. He went to the hospital, fell asleep, and […]
The Role of Suffering
Read: Romans 5:1-11 We rejoice in our sufferings. (v. 3) I have a friend who is one of the only female Christian leaders in Pakistan. Imagine living in a poor Muslim country with only a 1 percent Christian population and then repeatedly facing questions about your legitimacy as a seminary professor (because you are a woman) […]
Hopeless
Read: Psalm 137 How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? (v. 4 NRSV) The heading in my Bible for Psalm 137 says, “Lament over the Destruction of Jerusalem,” but I don’t agree that it’s a psalm of lament. It’s more a cry of hopelessness. The psalms of lament end with a turn […]
Dancing Skeletons?
Read: Ezekiel 37:1-14 Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost. (v. 11) I remember hearing the old spiritual “Dry Bones” for the first time. I was nine years old, and my big brother’s high school choir sang it. They used percussive sound effects as the toe bone connected to the foot bone and […]
Dogri Christmas Tappa
One of the many forms of media outreach that the Words of Hope team in India employs is music. Setting lyrics to music can touch hearts in ways that words alone do not. And in the region of Jammu and Kashmir, people have been requesting that our team create gospel music in their language of […]
Hope in a Compost Bucket
Read: John 12:20-32 If it dies, it bears much fruit. (v. 24) I love my compost bucket. It’s provided by a local farm, and every month they cart away a full bucket of organic waste, from coffee grounds to dryer lint, and provide an empty bucket in exchange. As the month goes on, the materials break […]