Lamenting While Waiting in Hope
Texts: Romans 5:1-5; 8:18-27; Hebrews 5:8-10
Days 71-74 in Around the Bible in Eighty Days.
Divine grace empowers hopeful waiting even as we groan for wholeness, for shalom.
We live in-between-the-times. The creation is a very good place to inhabit. Yet, it is presently filled with chaos, both natural and moral. In many ways, God’s good creation is also a broken place, especially where human sin contributes its nauseating and tragic influences. Some call this “fallenness.” Whatever we may name it, we live in a reality filled with both good and evil, both order and chaos.
Evil and chaos create suffering in human lives. And sufferers groan under the burden, yearning for deliverance. We groan for a world without suffering. We yearn for shalom in every aspect of life, both body and soul. We groan for release from the brokenness of the world. We yearn for the death of death itself. We seek something or someone who will free us from this bondage, especially death.
The gospel offers hope. The grace of God appeared in Jesus of Nazareth. Through the resurrection of Jesus, God defeated death. The gospel means, through the pouring out of the Spirit, that victory has already arrived and is experienced even now. But the fullness of that hope has not yet appeared.
We live with hope by the power of God’s grace, and yet we continue to groan under the bondage of decay. We groan and wait in hope. We lament and hope.
Divine grace empowers hopeful waiting even as we groan for wholeness, for shalom.