hope - 1st week of Advent
28 - 11/16 /14:54
This morning I visited the home in which an elderly gentleman died last night. While his death was expected the loss still hurt.
The respected thinkers of our age claim that death is the end. After you die there is only nothing, existence is extinguished, reality stops, your consciousness goes dark totally and forever. Ultimately, therefore, all hope is a sham. Even if in this life you should gain everything for which you ever hoped, it will all be taken from you at death. The ancient classical writers viewed hope as a temporary illusion.
The respected thinkers of our age claim that death is the end. After you die there is only nothing, existence is extinguished, reality stops, your consciousness goes dark totally and forever. Ultimately, therefore, all hope is a sham. Even if in this life you should gain everything for which you ever hoped, it will all be taken from you at death. The ancient classical writers viewed hope as a temporary illusion.
Hope is central to Advent. But real hope, not wishful thinking or magic. In the Bible hope is intertwined with the promises and acts of God, particularly Jesus’ resurrection. The apostle Paul acknowledged that humans are corruptible beings. But he was confident that when this life ends believers will be made incorruptible. Corruptible means decay and destruction. Death puts corruption on display. Yet believers are promised eternal life with amazing incorruptible bodies. One of Jesus’ twelve disciples put it this way. “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 appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
We shall be like Jesus, having the kind of body the resurrected Jesus had. This is the hope Christ-followers celebrate. This is the hope of Advent. This is the hope Jesus offers to all who believe in Him ~
Merry Christmas,
Dan Nygaard
We shall be like Jesus, having the kind of body the resurrected Jesus had. This is the hope Christ-followers celebrate. This is the hope of Advent. This is the hope Jesus offers to all who believe in Him ~
Merry Christmas,
Dan Nygaard