hope

SO thankful for this pastor's words this week:

If you’re paying attention, it’s exhausting out there. The news hollers like a 3 a.m. car alarm, bills pile up, and the future feels like a fogged-up windshield. It’s tempting to crawl under the covers and wait for the all-clear.

But the life of faith keeps tugging at our sleeve: hope.
Not the thin, chirpy kind that insists “everything happens for a reason.” I mean the stubborn, biblical sort—the “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.” The psalmist names the source: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” That’s not naïveté; that’s testimony from people who’ve seen some things and still found God showing up.

Scripture is a greatest-hits album of God meeting people on their worst days. Wilderness wanderers find bread they didn’t bake. Terrified disciples hear a word stronger than wind. Women weeping at a tomb discover that death has overplayed its hand. Again and again, fear converts into courage, despair into a livable future.

The new world God is midwifing doesn’t airbrush the present; it reframes it. The cross isn’t erased—it’s folded into a bigger story than Caesar can imagine. Hope doesn’t whisk us away from pain; it hands us work gloves. We lament gun violence, racial terror, and cruelty toward the poor and the stranger, and we drag those headlines into God’s project of redemption, restoration, and repair.

So the church can’t be a vaguely spiritual waiting room. We’re a community apprenticed to resurrection. When someone’s candle gutters, we don’t scold about flame maintenance; we cup our hands and share the light. When courage leaks, we loan ours. When cynicism whispers nothing changes, we rehearse the story again.

This is our wager: the God who raised Jesus hasn’t retired or handed the world to the loudest bullies. In confusing times, we cling to hope without apology, scatter it recklessly, and trust the One who hasn’t abandoned us yet.

And when your hands get tired, we’ll hold the lamp for you.
 
-Rev. Derek Penwell
Douglass Boulevard Christian Church
 
Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation