In all the recent posts about hope, I’ve taken such a human and earth-bound view. Our habit is to see what is right in front of our noses today, even when we’re talking about great hopes God has given us. It’s hard for us to peer beyond this world we can touch and see and hear.
Everything we’ve talked about is true. God is for us; He takes an active part in our earthly lives; our hopes, no matter what those are, will never be misplaced when we hope in the Lord of the Universe. No matter what it is we need today, God’s love surrounds us, He holds us, carries us, provides what we need.
But there is an even greater hope for the children of God, a hope that goes far beyond the dust of our humanity and the shortness of our time. This hope is what Paul refers to when he says in Ephesians, “I keep praying that you’ll be able to see this hope to which you’ve been called.”
This hope is that we are becoming like Jesus Christ, who claims us as His own, and we live forever.
Whoa. This is huge. And, frankly, pretty hard to swallow for those who don’t believe. A thought: Remember how the Jews reacted to Jesus when He claimed to be God? And how do you suppose the world today reacts when we claim to have God living within us, claim to be destined to be like Jesus Christ? Perhaps we even have to ask ourselves: Can we believe that? Do we believe that?
But this is God’s plan, the fullness of the hope He gives us, the mystery of God’s relationship to those who come to Him.
This is so huge that we can’t cover it in one short post. Come to think of it, we can NEVER cover the whole subject. The enormity of this is beyond what we will ever be able to grasp, beyond what we can know and understand as long as we are in these bodies. We can only begin to catch glimpses as the Spirit within us opens our eyes to the astounding, grand, immense, out-of-this-world, radical hope we have.
So I’m just nudging you to think about this. Ponder this hope. Ask the Spirit to open your eyes, to help you catch sight of what God has planned for you.
You are called to a hope that will change how you look at everything in your time here on earth.
Living with great expectation ... 
I was listening to 103.3 on the radio on the way home from work this evenng and the host was talking to a Japanese man regarding what was happening in Japan. He was saying that the Japanese think about new life and new beginnings. They always have hope. The first day of the New Year, they think about starting over with a new beginning. He states even with this tsunami, they will have hope in new beginnings. They may have lost everything, but they always have a new beginning. What a way to live life. As Christians, we really do have new life and new beginnings. When we have trauma in our lives, do we automatically think about new beginnings? I know I don’t, but if I allowed myself to believe that and know that God always has our beginnings in His hand, maybe the tragedies wouldn’t be quite so traumatic. What do you think?