Hope For Today

Dear Friends, With the death of Jesus on that first Good Friday, his followers grieved and mourned not only for Jesus' death but also for the death of their hopes and dreams and the loss of purpose and meaning to their life.  Their hopes were dashed, their dreams deflated and their purpose for living destroyed.  All these things had been wrapped up in Jesus and who they thought he was and his purpose for coming.  Even though Jesus had explained it to them, they had misunderstood him.  They thought he had come to save them from the tyrannical rule of the Romans, they thought he was going to be their military leader.  For 3 days they were grieving the loss of a loved one and they were in despair over all that they had lost.  Two disciples on the road to Emmaus said to a stranger (they didn't at first realise it was Jesus in his new resurrection body) " We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. This all happened three days ago." Lu...

Dear Friends, One Sunday morning after the church service I was chatting over coffee with a lady and a mutual friend.  When she saw Jess she said that my daughter looks just like me and my friend added that we have the same character too.  She's not the first one to say how much my daughter looks like me.  I know that on several occasions I've said to Josh, my son, "Oh, you're just like your father!" when he acts in a certain way.  It's no surprise that there are these family resemblances, after all, being family means we have the same DNA.  People also say that you become like the person you live with. Not only do we all have a physical family, when we become Christians God gives us a spiritual family too, he adopts us into his family and we become children of God.  " God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure." Ephesians 1:5...