Easter - From “I Had Hoped” to “I Have Hope”

Resurrection Stories - ancient and personal

This morning, I shared in our Easter service about my own experience of resurrection that has been ongoing for the last ten+ years and how I experienced some echoes of the resurrection stories in the Gospels of John and Luke.  The message was inspired by what Sarah Bessey wrote in her latest book where she lifted up the words from the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) where they say to the person who was walking the road with them that “we had hoped that [Jesus] was the one who would redeem Israel.”

The resurrection story begins with “We had hoped” and then slowly shifts to “we have hope.”  But it isn’t a simple flipping of a light switch and all is well.  The resurrection story starts with a morning kind of like what we had to begin the day here - grey, rainy, and dreary.  But then the slow glints of hope that emerge.     

So my message went back and forth between Mary’s story at the tomb, the two on the road to Emmaus, and my personal journey of the last ten+ years.  If you are interested in the message, you can view it here:

In the message I shared about how the Psalms became a central part of that journey.  You can find all of those Psalm posts from January through July of 2014 on this site or you can just check out this (very long - 300+ pages) PDF that has all the photos, scriptures, and reflections.  It isn’t edited and sometimes might not make a whole lot of sense out of the 2014 context.  But as I was re-reading them as I put it together into a PDF this past week, I could see the slow move from “I had hoped” to “I have hope.”  I pray that you are able to make that slow move in your own life.

Here’s the PDF

GPLJ,
Ed

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