FROM THE SERVANT GENERAL
OUR THEME FOR 2025
(Part 2)
A TIME TO HOPE
September 27, 2024
Today’s readings:
Ecclesiastes 3:1-11
Psalm 144:1-4
Luke 9:18-22
Qoheleth tells us, “There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens.” (Eccl 3:1). He goes on to cite the different events of life, looking at opposites—life and death, weeping and laughing, love and hate, war and peace (Eccl 3:2-8). He further says that “God has made everything appropriate to its time” but that we humans are unable to grasp the beginning or end of what He does (Eccl 3:11). Thus all is vanity.
David did recognize that “man is but a breath, his days are like a passing shadow.” (Ps 144:4). It could seem to some that we do not really matter in this world. But that is not the case. David asked God a rhetorical question: “Lord, what is man that you take notice of him; the son of man, that you think of him?” (Ps 144:3). We matter to God! God sent His own Son Jesus to give his life as a ransom for our sins. By Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection (Lk 9:22), we are saved. Whatever is happening to us in the cycle of life, with all its ups and down, joys and sorrows, victories and defeats, we can always look to God.
In all this is our hope. That even in the seeming negatives in life, God is positively at work—looking to our good, helping us endure in affliction, forming us through the crucible of the cross, bringing us to holiness.
And there is more. Jesus has not only saved us, but uses us as his instruments to carry on with his mission in the world. We are to proclaim Christ and the good news of salvation in him. When we do so, we come against the forces of darkness, and we become engaged in spiritual warfare. We come against a powerful enemy, but we are not left to fend for ourselves. As God’s holy warriors, we can acclaim, “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war; my safeguard and my fortress, my stronghold, my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.” (Ps 144:1-2).
As in any war, we will encounter opposition, suffering, pain, even seeming defeats. But our strength is in God. In Jesus is our hope for victory.
Thus we see that in all circumstances of life, with Jesus at the center, hope abounds. We just need to know the answer to a basic question of Jesus to us: “who do you say that I am?” (Lk 9:20a). Peter as a Jew answered correctly that he was “the Messiah of God.” (Lk 9:20b). For us Christians, Jesus is Savior and Lord.
But today there are Christians who seem not to know who Jesus truly is. Jesus asks, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” (Lk 9:18b).
- For modernists in the Church, Jesus is just one of many ways to God. But the reality is that Jesus in the only Savior, the only way to the Father.
- Some Church leaders, both clergy and lay, look to power and position, lording it over and even abusing those placed under their care. But the reality is that Jesus came not to be served but to serve. As Master and overall leader, he is a servant
- Liberals in the Church do not want to offend, to the extent of not pointing out one’s sin. We are supposed to just be nice to one another. But the reality is that Jesus publicly denounced the scribes and Pharisees as hypocrites, calling them blind guides, blind fools, whitewashed tombs, brood of vipers. So much for being nice!
- Many Christians want only the good that God can give, but cannot grasp the place of suffering and pain the life of an authentic follower of Christ. But the reality is that Jesus went to the cross, and he calls on us to embrace his cross, saying that those who do not carry the cross in following him cannot be his disciple.
And so we have the ups and downs of life. And in the world today, the downs seem to overwhelm the ups. The world is in the deep darkness of sin and evil. Even the Church has been infected by the smoke of the evil one. Where do we turn to? What is the constant we can cling to?
It is hope in God. We turn to Jesus, who is the hope of our salvation. Hope in Jesus does not disappoint. In this valley of tears, we are to rejoice, because we rejoice in hope.
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