Echoing HopeSample

Resurrection Hope

Pain reminds us of all that is not yet healed in our lives or in the world. Is it possible to still hope in the midst of our losses?

Jesus’s empty tomb displays loud and clear that a profound and genuine hope can accompany our pain. Resurrection is not merely a one-off thing that God did with Jesus to prove that he is God. Resurrection is the hope that God freely offers humankind. 

Our pain is real. But the gospel says it is not permanent. 

All that feels dandy, doesn’t it? But discovering Jesus in our real pain, here and now, is often much harder. 

In his book Lament for a Son, Nicholas Wolterstorff described his journey of losing his son to an accident. Wolterstorff writes: “Every act of evil extracts a tear from God, every plunge into anguish extracts a sob from God. . . . God’s work to release himself from his suffering is his work to deliver the world from its agony; our struggle for joy and justice is our struggle to relieve God’s sorrow. . . . Until justice and peace embrace, God’s dance of joy is delayed.”

God, according to both Testaments, isn’t exempt from sorrow. God’s Spirit groans in the midst of our broken world (Romans 8:18–28), as did the Hebrews under slavery to Pharaoh (Exodus 2:23–24; 6:5). As early as the flood story in the first book of the Bible, God is said to be “heartbroken” (Genesis 6:6). God doesn’t always get what God wants because God has created a world with free will. 

The task of bringing this world to its hopeful destiny of ultimate liberation from sin and perfect union with heaven is driven by God’s own desire to be free from sorrow, as well as to free us from ours. Jesus isn’t missing when things go wrong. Jesus is weeping with us every time pain disrupts our lives. 

Where is Jesus? Here. Even if it doesn’t feel like it. 

How do you respond to the idea that God also longs for you to be free from sorrow? How would it change your experience of pain to believe that Jesus is weeping with you?