Amazing! Praise God! This post will be partially dedicated to the Passover, and it will also detail our experience in a Korean church on April 1, 2018.
The pastor preached about hope and expectation. He talked, in English, about how Jesus was expected to be a military commander, leading armies to victory, restoring Israel to its former glory. A personal connection was made to the audience when the pastor talked about how we –as humans–subdue ourselves to sin without putting forth a fight. Without considering Jesus died on the cross not just to cleanse us from our sins, but to offer us an olive branch of eternal life.
On a daily basis, we allow negativity to cause influx in our lives. Not only that, we allow ourselves to focus on negative (sinful) energy. Turning to the scriptures, we can see that the 12 disciples gave up everything to follow Jesus. They heavily invested in Jesus, and Jesus heavily invested in them. When Jesus was crucified, the disciples lost all their hope.
Equal to our own lives today, everyone has experienced this form of loss one way or another: death of a family member, a lost puppy, a murdered child. Fear takes hold of us by the throat, and our failure hinders us from success. We swamp ourselves with guilt, bringing it past our brow, allowing us to drown in the filth. Sucking for air, our lungs become encapsulated with muck. Worms eat away at us, fill our nostrils, wiggling their way up to our brains. All of it is distracting us from our purpose. We allow ourselves to feel fear. We allow ourselves to drown in the swamp. We allow negativity to penetrate our hearts.
Murder and losing a child may seem unfair. Please understand, I am not trying to downplay your hurt, but instead, offer a different perspective on how passover can rekindle your faith with God. When a son dies too soon, or a loved one is murdered, we may begin to question our Holy Father.
“Why, God, I have been faithful to you all these years. Why me?”
When all our expectations and hope for God is dashed to the ground, we lose faith. Satan thirsts for us to be in this position. Satan wants the worms to penetrate not just our lungs, but engulf our heart. What’s amazing about these battles we face on a daily basis? It does not matter how engulfed we feel in negativity and sorrow, Jesus and God will always be at our rescue. Let us again turn to scripture to cite evidence of hope being restored, even during what may seem to be the darkest hour.
We must remember, Jesus refills his disciples’ hope. John 18, 20-23 shows how Jesus resurrect and breathes the Holy Spirit back into his followers. . He bestows his disciples, saying “peace be with you.” Peace. Not a word chosen by mistake (obviously). A word with many interpretive meanings: Be peaceful, find your tranquility. Why? Because at the end of the day, Jesus and God tag team and come through in the end. Feeling hopeless? I’m not sure how God will do it, but I know He will rekindle your hope. God rekindles our hope with a new life, a new creation, by blanketing us with the holy spirit.
Passover occurs during one of Jesus’ darkest hour– his crucified on the cross. As Christians, we can analize, elaborate, and explain how Jesus died on the cross. This denotes a painful occasion (the death of Jesus Christ (the negative side of the coin)), and a positive– the prophecy is fufilled, and Jesus resurrects. We do not talk enough about resurrection. We do not talk enough about being refilled with hope. Through this resurrection, Jesus offers us a tree bearing the most amazing fruit: that fruit is juicy, pungent to the core, tangy when licked on the chops; that fruit is eternal life.
Yes, our earthly problems are difficult for us to conquer. Sometimes we feel like we are drowning in a swamp of despair (and, quite frankly, that’s ok. After all, we are human). But next time you find yourself wallowing, try to see a thick fruit branch dangling right over your head that Jesus has draped over your swamp for you to grab. The fruit of eternal life is ours, and given only by the Son of Man. We need only to bite into the fruit. And this time, it is not a temptation from Satan.
