LACK OF HOPE

Max Lucado, pastor and writer, wrote, “We live in a day of despair. The suicide rate in America has increased 24% since 1999. Twenty-four percent! If a disease saw such a spike, we would deem it an epidemic. How do we explain the increase? We’ve never been more educated. We have tools of technology our parents could not have dreamed of. We are saturated with entertainment and recreation. Yet more people than ever are orchestrating their own deaths. How could this be?

Among the answers must be this: people are dying for lack of hope. Secularism sucks the hope out of society. It reduces the world to a few decades between birth and hearse. Many people believe this world is as good as it gets, and let’s face it. It’s not that good. But People of the Promise have an advantage. They determine to ponder, proclaim, and pray the promises of God. They are like Abraham who “didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong” (Romans 4:20, The Message translation)

“Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope.” Jesus