Brian.Indrelunas.com

Recently the Valley has had a few rainy days. Rain is something that doesn’t happen too often out here, and I’d like to use it as an example of sorts because it helps us understand the greatness of the hope that Easter has in store for us.

Consider how we talk about the rain. People generally say, “I hope it rains today,” when they have some reason to expect that it will rain. Maybe it’s cloudy. Maybe Sean McLaughlin had forecast some afternoon showers. Maybe it seems like it’s been just long enough since the last time the Valley caught a few raindrops. Anyway, it’s far less likely for people to say they’re hoping for rain on one of those days in the middle of the summer where the chance of precipitation is 0.0 percent. To walk out into the 110-degree heat and proclaim, “I hope it rains today,” would probably earn you a few laughs. A more common summer phrase would probably be, “I wish it would rain.”

That’s because, according to a dictionary definition, hope is “a wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment,” whereas a wish is merely a desire or longing for something that needs no reasonable expectation.

Over the past few weeks, I’m sure a lot of people have been hoping for rain. But very shortly, we’ll be entering that season where one can only wish for a downpour... because we all know how likely that is in the middle of June.

When we say that the Easter story gives us hope, we’re not just talking about something that we want. We’re talking about a promise that God has given us; something that we can be confident in and trust in. That hope, as Romans 8:21 tells us, is “that everything God made would be set free from ruin to have the freedom and glory that belong to God’s children” (NCV).

If we trust in God and His promises, we can confidently expect that because of Jesus’s death and resurrection we can be set free from the ruin that is sin and spend eternity with God. The hope that God offers us through Jesus’s resurrection is the hope of salvation.

In the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul rebuts those who disbelieve that one day we too will rise from the dead. He writes in verses 16-19, “If the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised either. ¹⁷ And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith has nothing to it; you are still guilty of your sins. ¹⁸ And those in Christ who have already died are lost. ¹⁹ If our hope in Christ is for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone else in the world” (NCV).

Indeed, Easter reminds us of a hope that goes beyond this life. As we can see in 1 Corinthians, because Jesus rose from the dead on Easter morning, we can be freed from our sin and we too can be raised from the dead to new life.

In fact, Jesus is our only hope for eternal life. As Paul tells the Colossians in chapter 1, verse 27, “God decided to let his people know this rich and glorious secret which he has for all people. This secret is Christ himself, who is in you. He is our only hope for glory.” (NCV).

While many people put their trust in the things of this world and their own actions and expect to be saved because they did some good things throughout their lives, those people are trusting in a false hope. Our true hope for eternal life springs not from our own deeds, but rather from God’s justifying grace and mercy.

On Easter we come together to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and we remember that because of Jesus, and Jesus alone, we have the hope of salvation. And we’re not just wishing. We can confidently expect that we can have eternal life if we put our trust in God and His promises.

When Mary Magdalene and the two disciples discovered Jesus’s empty tomb on that first Easter morning, they thought that someone had taken Him away. But no one had really taken anything; what we discover on Easter morning is that, through His resurrection, Jesus has given us the hope of salvation and eternal life. Amen.