Lent Devotions: No Hope There
The following devotion was featured in Unfinished, Church Anew’s Lent in a Box series for 2023. Learn more and purchase access to all the resources here.
No Hope There
Rev. Megan Graves
John 11:1-45 (read the passage)
Nope, no hope there.
No chance of anything good coming from that person.
Oh, that stinks. I don’t want to go near it.
That’s been too far gone for too long there’s no hope of any life coming from that anymore.
How many times have you looked out at the world and said one of these things to yourself? Often we look at circumstances that others find themselves in and write them off as a complete loss – there’s no hope for them, nothing good could come of it, no change possible.
Martha, though she hoped for a different outcome, held this attitude that there was no hope for her brother in this passage. She believed Jesus’s presence could have changed the outcome earlier, but now there was no hope of anything but what had already come to pass. Outside of the tomb, she proclaims, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.”
As she continues to feel hopeless about the situation, Jesus challenges her lack of faith: “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”
What happens to the world when we no longer live as though we believe in the power of God?
What happens when we lose hope in the movement of the Holy Spirit?
Scripture shows us that Jesus showed up to heal the sick, feed the hungry, to raise the dead, and more. When we believe that God still moves in such transformative ways, when we expect these things to happen in the world, and that sometimes God invites us to participate in making them happen, what a difference it can make. If we believe that God still moves in life giving ways, we will see the glory of God all around us.
Prayer
Life-giving God, help us to live and move in the spaces we are called to inhabit in such a way that we know the glory of God because of our belief. We give thanks for your continual work of bringing hope to the hopeless. In your name we pray, Amen.
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