03-22-25

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
March 22, 2025
Some of you are waking up with excitement as your NCAA tournament brackets still look excellent. Others are finding themselves with absolutely no hope of having a single team in the Final Four, and for that reason, they’ve started counting the days until football season kicks off. And still others are wondering what I’m referencing as you do not like sports and are never happy when I use an illustration from sports. Wherever you are this morning, pause and name one thing that not only brings you hope, but if you were to share it with someone else, that person might also find some hope. Hope is powerful, assuming it is hope rooted in God’s hope for this world. There can be moments when our hope appears defeated, dead, and buried. We’ve all looked into what seems to be an abyss of hopelessness. In those moments, we look to God and ask, “So what now?” And I hear God respond, “Do not lose hope.” You may not say it out loud, but inside you might think to yourself, “That’s easy for you to say. You’re God.” Yet if God dwells within us, then the dream of God resides within us. And though God’s dream can be paused, pushed to the back burner, even obstructed with things that are not of God, it does not mean God’s dream is lost. We talk about Jesus being in the grave for three days, and though it was not technically 72 hours, those hours between Friday night and early Sunday morning would have been one of those abysses of hopelessness for any of his followers. When the enfleshing of the dream is killed and buried, it usually means the dream is dead… except when God is involved. Remember, you carry the image of God, and thus you carry the dream of God, a dream that even death could not crush.

As you dwell within me, Sower of the Holy Dream, I pray for that dream to capture me in such a way that I will not let go, even when things look pretty bleak. Amen.