HOPE

I have been teaching a Bible study for a group of ladies at my church home in Albemarle on Wednesdays.  We are looking at The Beatitudes, one of my favorite passages.  Last Wednesday night the Beatitude was meek.  This is a difficult concept for all of us because no one uses the term anymore, and when they do use it, meek so often is defined as weak.  Not so, from Christ's divine perspective.  We had a very productive session, and then I asked the question about being meek in today's culture.  How do we live, when do we get angry, when do we fight, when do we make a stand and when do we not?  Hard questions.  Well, suffice to say, we began discussing the culture which led to politics.  Those of you who know me well, know this was probably a discussion that I, as the leader, needed to keep under control.  Oh well, blew that one!  We left there feeling rather bleak and blue over what is happening in America today.  What I have been trying to meditate on the rest of this week is captured completely in an eschatological (over all view of Redemptive History) book written by Keith Mathison.  I am trying to read through the Bible and as I read through a book I am reading the commentary from the book From Age to Age; the Unfolding of Biblical Eschatology.  On page 495 he quotes George Eldon Ladd from the book The Blessed Hope:  

"The events of the eschatological consummation are not merely detached events lying in the future which Paul speculates.  They are rather redemptive events that have already begun to unfold within history.  The blessings of the Age to Come no longer lie exclusively in the future; they have become objects of present experience.  The death of Christ is an eschatological event.  Because of Christ's death, the justified person stands already on the age-to-come side of the eschatological judgment, acquitted of all guilt.  By virtue of the death of Christ, the believer has already been delivered from this present evil age (Gal. 1:4).  He or she has been transferred from the rule of darkness and now knows the life of the Kingdom of Christ (Co. 1:13).  In His cross, Christ has already defeated the powers of evil that have brought chaos into the world (Col. 2:14ff)."

This is the hope, the blessed hope.  We as Christians have only to observe actively what God is doing in the world today to bring about the Redemption of His Church.  

Waiting with renewed hope..............LYNN