Monday, January 31, 2005

1 February 2005

Today Jurgen Moltmann quotes John Calvin as the theologian of hope among the Reformers.



To us is promised eternal life - but to us, the dead. We are preached a blessed resurrection - but in the meantime we are surrounded by corruption. We are called just - and yet what dwells in us is sin. We hear of inexpressible blessedness - but in the meantime we are bowed down under unending misery. We are promised a superfluity of all good things - yet we are rich only in hunger and thirst. What would become of us if we did not obstinately cling to hope, and if our minds did not hasten along the paths lit up for us by God's Word and Spirit right through the darkness, beyond this world?



Calvin's opening line sounds much like Episcopal priest, Robert Farrar Capon. We begin dead...at the end...with nothing to count on our behalf. And then, to that hopeless place comes the water of baptism...the promise of new life...the wind of the Spirit...and life unlike anything we are able to bring to ourselves. It is very easy to dismiss what is promised and to hang on to the way we would like the world to go if we were the ones in charge of how things were to go. But the creative power of our God to make life out of nothing at all is quite amazing...as in amazing grace.



Connection: Some mornings are less than hopeful. Some days look more like the remnant of death than a pool of new life. Today may be one of those days. Don't be afraid to seek out people who will help you to look beyond what is into what is promised. That could be enough to turn, as the psalmist notes, mourning into dancing.



Lord of All Hopefulness, delight us with your power to renew and create and pull life from what we cannot see. For by your gracious power, we are able to taste what we do not know within our everyday life and then, we hunger for it again and again. Amen.

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