Defining Jesus - I Am The Resurrection And The Life

Where do you find hope when you are experiencing pain and loss? How do we confront or respond to the reality of death? I know that is a heavy way to start this conversation, but it is something that, whether we like to admit it or not, shapes our actions. Death, pain, and loss are one of the most forming events that can happen to humans. Let’s pull back even from a personal level to a cultural level. We lost over a million of our fellow citizens and 6 million of our fellow image-bearers of God to a pandemic. Do we honestly think that the cultural patterns we see today are not deeply influenced by that? From the great resignation to the hyper-politicization, while not exclusively a result of our collective loss, it is most certainly influenced by it. For those of us who have experienced loss personally, we know that we are different because of it. How that loss shapes us be it personally or collectively, comes from the answer to one question, “Is everything going to be ok?” It’s the question of hope. Hope, in its most base form, is an assurance that everything will be ok. In the face of pain and loss, this is what we ultimately want. We all want to have hope in the face of pain and loss. Hope, in the words of Plato, is humanity's greatest gift. We want to be hope-filled people.