The Lasso Way Sample

Have you ever gotten so close to something that you really wanted, only to see it slip from your grasp?  We all have.  I am a huge sports fan, particularly of the Chicago Cubs. Needless to say, I’ve had my hopes crushed on numerous occasions. It is one of the perils of following sports and attaching yourself to a team. In the final episode of season one, Ted and AFC Richmond find themselves in a challenging moment.  Their season had seen its share of ups and downs, but it all came down to the final match of the season.  Ted, unaware of their past defeats kept hearing the locals use the phrase "it's the hope that kills you."  Fans use this phrase to keep them from raising their expectations so that when defeat comes, it won't crush them. There are few trophies in their trophy case. As a Cubs fan, I totally understood their peculiar relationship to hope But hope in the Christian faith is something entirely different. Hope for us isn’t wishful thinking or a feeling of expectation. Hope for us has a name: Jesus Christ. Our hope is rooted in the promises of God. This gives us an unshakable confidence in God’s faithfulness because God has always proven faithful. One of my favorite images in Scripture comes from Zechariah 9:12. It says, “Come back to the place of safety all you prisoners who still have hope.”  I love this image of us being prisoners to hope. As followers of Christ, we are bound to this hope we have in Christ.  We can’t escape it, nor would we want to. It is our hope in Christ and the resurrection that keeps us going.  It is also what motivates us to work towards this new creation. God is calling us to join Him in this mission. To be people who believe. To be people who are kind to others. To be people who practice forgiveness because we have been forgiven much. To be people of hope that even when we can’t see it, God is at work and will bring everything to perfect and whole completion in Christ, His Son! Let the hope of Christ grow in your life. Let it shape your present and your future.