On January 2nd, 2020, I published the most ironic blog post of my life. Titled “Why 2020 Will Be the Best Year of My Life“, the post outlined my plans for the year and detailed how I thought the year would go.
Even in the darkest of times, God is good. It seems cliche, doesn’t it? Yet over the last eight weeks, this has become my mantra. I have repeated it over and over again, and the words still haven’t lost their meaning.
We all suffer. It’s part of being human. Some suffer more than others, leaving us to question life’s equality. Others bear suffering as their cross, convinced that the burden doesn’t exist.
In one way or another, every single one of us is suffering. You, reading this, are suffering. Right now. In some way, you are. I, writing this, am suffering. It’s part of sin’s curse.
Hope. The defining factor between Christianity and Secularism. As I wrote about in my previous post, defining hope within Christ, we understand hope as being grounded on the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and truth of the Gospel, complete contentment within Christ and His plan, having released our sorrows and stress to Him, which allows us to look forward to the future “with eager expectation.”
In times like this, it can be difficult to have hope. Terror, with its contagious cold, takes ahold of even the bravest of men. Despair, with its fingers of dread, creeps in like a thief at night. One by one, we succumb to terror, and in our terror, we are moved to despair.
And yet God is a God of hope! These words seem to be the most difficult to utter, but they remain true. In the middle of the storm, God is there. He has all power, He has a plan, and it is good. And, through this plan, we have received faith and rejoice in our hope. He sent His son into a world far worse then one inhabited with the coronavirus, malaria, or even ebola. He sent his son into a world inhabited with sin, with the purpose of defeating that sin and ultimately eradicating it from humanity.
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.