Day 272 Defiant Hope

The Easter hope we have, the hope that never disappoints has nothing to do with optimism or the avoidance of suffering,  is a hope that can only come from a God who has experienced birth, and love and friendship and lepers and prostitutes and betrayal and suffering and death and burial and a decent into hell itself. Only a God who has born suffering himself can bring us any real hope of resurrection.

And if ever given the choice of optimism or resurrection I’d go with resurrection any day of the week. The Christian faith is one that does not pretend things aren’t bad. This is a faith that does not offer platitudes.

This is not a faith that produces optimism, it is a faith that produces a defiant hope that God is still writing the story and that despite darkness, a light shines and that God can redeem our crap and that beauty matters and that despite every disappointing thing we have ever done or that we have ever endured, that there is no hell from which resurrection is impossible.

The Christian faith is one that kicks at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.

                                                                            - from Sarcastic Lutheran