Hope in the darkest hour

The events of Holy Week have much to do withdiscouragement. Jesus went from one demoralising and discouraging experience to another. He was betrayed by a close friend, denied by his colleagues, falsely accused, unjustly condemned, spirituallyisolated, shouted at by the crowd, physically tortured and cruelly crucified as an outcast. He endured the darkest of dark hours.

His followers, as well being the cause of hisdiscouragement, were themselves overwhelmed by waves of hopelessness and despair. The one in whom they had placed their hopes appeared powerless to create the future they had thought he had promised.They had to face many dark and lonely hours of discouragement.

And yet on Easter Sunday morning, it became apparent that amidst all of the discouragement, frustration, confusion and uncertainty, there was a much greater and long-lasting sense of God's purpose at work. Resurrection, new life, renewed hope, and aneternal perspective led to a transformation among those who saw what was really going on.

However great the sense of discouragement any of us may be feeling in these days, we do well to be reminded that God's deeper sense of hope can and will one day make sense of our temporary condition, bleak though it may seem right now.

Vaclav Havel, the Czech leader who knew the discouragement of persecution, imprisonment, his wife's death from cancer and his own diagnosis of serious illness put it well when he said, 'Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.'

I wish you an Easter which brings a deeper dimension of hope, of purposefulness and of joy, all flowing from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.