THE BEGINNING OF GOD SETTING EVERYTHING RIGHT AGAIN

'..with the resurrection of Jesus God's new world has begun; in other words, his being raised from the dead is the start, the paradigm case, the foundation, the beginning, of that great setting-right which God will do for the whole cosmos at the end. The risen body of Jesus is the one bit of the physical universe that has already been "set right", Jesus is therefore the one through whom everything else will be "set right".'

Tom Wright, Acts for Everyone: Part 2 Chapters 13-28, p.93. 

HOPELESS? HOPEFUL PRAYER

His prayers lean upward
on the dark and fall
like flares from a catastrophe.
He is a man breathing the fear
of hopeless prayer, prayed
in hope.

Wendell Berry, from '1994 VI' in A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997, p.181. 

DON'T LOSE THE SUPERNATURAL THRUST OF CHRISTIANITY

'Once the supernatural thrust has gone from Christianity, what remains? Well-meaning sentiment and a set of commandments found to be crushing, the finality of change they were meant to serve having been summarily dismissed.'

Erik Varden, Chastity, p.114.

THE HOPE IN FAIRY STORIES

'The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous 'turn' (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist', nor 'fugitive'. In its fairy-tale - or otherworld - setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

It is the mark of a good fairy story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to the child or man that hears it, when the 'turn' comes, a catch of breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given my any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality.'

JRR Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, p.153.

HOPE DEFINED

'Real hope involves a confident vision of my future prospects as good.'
Gregory E Ganssle, Our Deepest Desires, p.123.

RESURRECTION HOPE

'Teach me to live that I may dread,
The grave as little as my bed.'

Thomas Ken in Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature: A lifetime in the English Countryside, p.134. 

CLAIMING OUR INHERITANCE

'...when you look into the book of God and find any promise there, you may make it your own; just as an heir who rides over a lot of fields and meadows says. This meadow is my inheritance, and this corn field is my inheritance, and the he sees a fine house, and says, This fine house is my inheritance. He looks at them with a different eye from a stranger who rides over those fields. A carnal heart reads the promises, and reads them merely as stories, not that he has any great interest in them. But every time a godly man reads the Scriptures (remember this when you are reading the Scripture) and there meets a promise, he ought to lay his hand upon it and say, This is part of my inheritance, it is mine, and I am to live upon it.' 

Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, p.83. 

WHAT TRUE HOPE IS

'Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions. It is not compelled to work away at keeping up appearances with a bogus spirituality. It is the opposite of desperate and panicky manipulations, of scurrying and worrying. 

And hoping is not dreaming. It is not spinning an illusion or fantasy to protect us from our boredom or our pain. It means a confident, alert expectation that God will do what he said he will do. It is imagination put in the harness of faith. It is a willingness to let God do it his way and in his time.' 

Eugene H Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, p.138. 

HOW HUMANKIND DOESN'T CHANGE

'Three things were immortal: good and evil and the hope in men's hearts that evil would be overcome by good.' 

Howard Spring, Fame is the Spur, p.646. 

HOPE DEFINED

'...hope leads one to consider oneself within the context of one's story, stretching it forward to its best possible ending.' 

Karen Swallow Prior, On Reading Well, p.135. 

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

'I must confess equally boldly that my own solid hopes for the well-being of my country depend, not so much on her navies and armies, nor on the wisdom of her rules, nor on the spirit of her people, as on the persuasion that she still contains many who love and obey the Gospel of Christ. I believe that their prayers may yet prevail.' 

William Wilberforce in Matt Perman, What's Best Next, p.303. 

DESIRE

'When you would fill a purse, knowing how large a present it is to hold, you stretch wide its cloth or leather: knowing how much you are to put in it, and seeing that the purse is small, you extend it to make more room. So by delaying [his gift] God strengthens our longing, through longing he expands our soul, and by expanding our soul he increases its capacity. So brethren, let us long, because we are to be filled...That is our life, to be trained by longing: and our training through the holy longing advances in the measure that our longings are detached from the love of this world...Let us stretch ourselves out towards him, that when he comes he may fill us full.' 

Augustine of Hippo in Christopher West, Fill These Hearts, p.77.  

HOPE

'Beyond the tears of sorrow and sadness that we shed in this life, hope brings tears of sweetness and joy. Hope may break through in a song, a sunset, a poem, a movie, an unexpected act of kindness,a good laugh, the birth of a child, the embrace of a loved one. And when these moments come (they can't really be manufactured, although we can dispose ourselves to them) we should drink them in...and listen. If we listen, we can almost hear a voice whispering to out hearts: "It is good to be here. Rest here for a while. Savor it. For this is a taste, a taste of what is to come. Let it lift you up. Let it fire you up. Let it give you hope. You're not crazy. You're not wrong to believe there's something more. You will not be unhappy. Have faith. Trust. Open to the gift. It's coming. Your desire for Life is not in vain."'

Christopher West, Fill These Hearts, p.61. 

HOPE

'Hope is the form that faith takes in relation to the future.'

Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon, p.63.

HOPE

'It is better to be as low as hell with a promise, than to be in paradise without one.'

John Flavel, Keeping the Heart, p.61.

HOPE

'...a Christian will part with anything rather than his hope; he knows that hope will keep the heart both from aching and breaking, from fainiting and sinking; he knows that hope is a beam of God, a spark of glory, and that nothing shall extinguish it till the soul be filled with glory.'

Thomas Brooks, Heaven on Earth, p.22.

HOPE

'When man is no longer able to look beyond his own death and relate himself to what extends beyond the time and space of his life, he loses his desire to create and the excitement of being human.'

Henri JM Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, p.13.  

HOPE

‘I shall rise from the dead...I shall see the Son of God, the Son of Glory, and shine myself as that son shines. I shall be united to the Ancient of Days, to God Himself, who had no morning, never began...No man ever saw God and lived. And yet I shall not live till I see God; and when I have seen him, I shall never die.’

John Donne in Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.171.

SUFFERING

'We are tossed on a tide that puts us to the proof, and if we could not sob our troubles in your ear, what hope should we have left to us?'

Augustine of Hippo in Os Guiness, God in the Dark, p.195.

PREACHING

'...it is our hopelessness that brings us to church of a Sunday, and any preacher who, whatever else he speaks, does not speak to that hopelessness might as well save his breath.'

Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth, p.55.