BoppWeBlog

So, I’m realizing now that many of my posts have been a bit negative at times, and I don’t think this is very representative of who I am. I’d like to think that I am a very positive guy, always seeing the silver lining.

I can’t begin to explain how powerful I think hope is for a person. Without hope, what do we have? Nothing. Without hope, what will we do to help improve the situation? Very little, if anything at all.

Every human on earth is capable of so much! We should all have hope in the people we interact with - our politicians, people from other countries and religions, and even the evildoers (for lack of a better term).

Just the mear mindset of hope is powerful enough to make things happen, not to mention makes you feel a lot better all around. Knowing others have hope in you is very encouraging and very compelling to do great things.

Jesus talks plenty about hope in the Bible. It is obviously an integral part of being a Christian. When there is little to hope in there is always hope in God. It isn’t naive to hope for the impossible. Probably just about everyone has been shown the impossible at some point in their life. Who are we to say what can and can’t be done?

It isn’t foolish to have hope when no one else around you feels that way. They may try and make you feel foolish, but hope is infectious, and you’re likely to rub off on them. To some, hope is almost insulting, and offensive at times. It can be seen as ignorance, or from someone who really doesn’t know the situation. I don’t believe hope always comes naturally to humans. It may need to be a conscious decision, rather than a feeling we wait for. It seems the bigger the problem, the harder it is to just have hope.

So… Here’s Hopin’

Now that’s a catchy title. Might be good for grabbing someone’s attention.

So Christians are supposed to love their enemies. I’ve mentioned in previous blogs how this can be much more difficult than just learning to love the dude that cut in front of you at the store. So what does it mean to actually love these people that we have, as a culture, been conditioned to hate?

One pastor’s words once said this. “If I preach on Sunday about feeding the poor, finding shelterand clothing for the homeless, counseling unwed mothers and helping with the adoption process, then this is praised with ‘God bless’. But what if instead I preached about providing medical aid to Iraqis, loving Muslims, befriending gang members, comforting the families of suicide bombers, loving rapists, wife beaters, tourturers and pedofiles? I’d most likely be thown off a cliff.”

I’d like to believe this is a bit dramatic, and ridiculous, but it does raise a pretty good point. It is really hard to love those whom we have been conditioned to hate. After all, the Christian love we profess MUST be strong enough to engage these “so called” enemies. We can’t, as Christians, pick and choose who we will associate with. Not that I or anyone should or would condone any of these awful things. But we need to embrace the “unembraceable”, just as Jesus did.

So why is ‘loving terrorists’ such a big deal? This is precisely what we are called to do by Jesus Christ. I hope that I’ll continue to learn more and more what it means to live this out every day of my life.