Romans 5:1-9 - Hope!! We have hope! Hope of what? Hope of eternal life with Him; the creator of the universe! What joy that is! Heather and I have been following the journey of Sara Walker. She was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer last year. She has been documenting her hope...her hope that this life is not the end. We are literally just passing through. (http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/sarawalker (the website to follow her hope). The other day she received the news that the tumor continued to grow even with aggressive treatment. But, she continues to praise God, she continues to discuss her joy in the Lord, her joy in life.... This is foreign to the world. In thinking about it, I do not know how those who do not believe in God get through things like Sara Walker is going through. They don't have the hope, the don't have the joy. How depressed that would be.
Rejoice in everything. Rejoice in sufferings?? What!? That is crazy! I have been fortunate that I have not had "sufferings" like Paul is referring to, but I use Sara Walker to be an example for me of this text. Sara is rejoicing in her sufferings, this joy that is inside her has built perseverance, this perseverance has built character that we can see from her postings and this character built the hope that she has documented so well. What an example for us!
God's love allows us to have this hope. This love was demonstated by the Cross. We have been reconciled to Christ. Reconciliation, what does that mean? "reconciled to Christ". As a CPA we work with reconciliations every day; bank statement reconciliations, reconciliations of the AR aging, reconciliations of the inventory balances. How do you perform these reconciliations? To perform any reconciliation you locate the differences between the two balances in detail. Then as time passes by these differences clear and disappear. Just like our sin. Our sin is what causes the differences. But, the good news is that differences don't just disappear in time, but they disappear immediately when accepting Christ's gift through baptism. Through the acceptance of Christ the "reconciling items" are cleared and continually erased through out life. These reconciling items are condemned by God through His Word. Praise the Lord that the sins that keeps us from being with the Most High has been removed, "cleared".
These cleared items gives Sara Walker hope; give us hope.
Hope, what a great word!
