Friday, April 15, 2011

Circle of Love ~ Friday April 15


Friday April 15                                               John 11:1-27

April 15th, does that sound like tax time for you?  If you are a procrastinator, you may not have received the word.  You are safe!  From our friends at the IRS: “Taxpayers will have until Monday, April 18 to file their 2010 tax returns and pay any tax due because Emancipation Day, a holiday observed in the District of Columbia, falls this year on Friday, April 15. By law, District of Columbia holidays impact tax deadlines in the same way that federal holidays do; therefore, all taxpayers will have three extra days to file this year.”  Do you feel better now or does that ruin your upcoming weekend?  Now you can establish the parameters of your weekly fast with a spirit of relief!

Read the full account of Mary, Martha and their brother Lazarus and then linger at the end of the story.  For it is at the end that you will find another “I am” of Jesus.  Are you keeping count?  This time he says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” What does that mean for you?

For me, it is all wrapped up in one word: hope!  And that divine hope is nothing to sneeze at.  Back in 1996 Sue and I became very involved in the process of providing rescue for abandoned children in Romania.  We became captured by a spirit of hopelessness that we saw with our own eyes.  At the same time, we were filled with a great hope that things could change and that we could be a part of helping that change come to pass.  And it did.  Hope is a powerful thing.

Today, our hope is still high but now it has expanded into other places of hopelessness.  It is the same hope that comes because Jesus is the resurrection and the life!  How deep does your hope run?  How are you expressing your hope in the world?

1 comment:

Tamara said...

"How am I expressing my hope in the world?" That's an amazingly convicting and motivating question! It's one thing to know the hope of Christ, and a whole 'nother thing to express it in the world. Thanks, Randy!