Saturday, August 13, 2016

The Christian and His Hope (and Hoping)

'Christian hope cuts against the twin temptations of distraction and despair by grounding us in another time and place.

'Take, for example, Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians. These letters show how the gospel of hope can enable us to live as an alternative society, a contrasting community that stands out by living according to the values grounded in God’s work of redemption. Christian hope lifts our eyes, not as an excuse for passivity or fatalistic resignation, but rather as an exhortation toward pursuing the day when the Lord will come. Christian hope helps us fight evil without the fear of ultimate failure.

'Oliver O’Donovan describes hope as a willingness to wait attentively “. . . attending wholly and with concentration focused on what is not yet happening, so that whatever is happening is handled with a mind supremely bent on something else.”...'

-- excerpt from Trevin Wax's post, "Can We Hope Again?"

No comments: