As we enjoy our Easter break, let us remind ourselves of our hope this Easter in the resurrection of Christ.

We live in a world where there is much brokenness, conflict and war.

What is Hope?

Hope is an expectation of good for the future. Where there is brokenness in your life, God wants you to step into glorious hope. God’s hope will not disappoint!

What Does the World Offer?

Some time ago I read an article by Russell Brand, giving advice on life. Writing as someone now fifteen years sober, he explains how to get a new perspective on life. But his perspective does not offer much hope – in fact, it makes for miserable reading.

He wrote:

You and your children, and everyone you love, is hurtling toward the boneyard. So we fill our days with temporary fixes, a twitch of pleasure to tide you over.

In other words, “eat, drink and be merry” – for you are heading toward a boneyard where there is no hope. Some time after Russell wrote this, he did come to a living faith and hope in Christ.

The Answer the World Misses

The Bible poses a profound question: what is life? Hedonism – the pursuit of pleasure until we all end up in the boneyard – is not the answer.

Others have reached the same conclusion. Bob Marley observed that “money can’t buy more life,” while Solomon, the wisest, richest and most powerful man of his time, declared that life is vanity – everything worthless. If wealth, wisdom and power could not satisfy, what can?

The answer is this: hope through the death and resurrection of Christ.

Our Brokenness is Fixed at the Cross

The Bible describes our relationship with God as broken – we are lost, dead in sin, having no hope and without God in the world. Islam describes man’s problem as ignorance, and so offers Sharia law – rules and regulations – as the fix. But we are not only ignorant; we are broken. We need healing, and that healing comes through the cross.

The world, meanwhile, keeps searching for its own answers. Alastair Campbell once famously said, “We don’t do God.” I recently read an article about cryogenics – the deep freezing of the body — suggesting it could be our best chance at cheating death, in the hope that fifty or a hundred years from now a person could be revived. It is a striking example of how far humanity will go to find an answer without God.

But salvation is more than forgiveness; it is being made truly alive. Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life.” – John 10:10

A Living Hope

Our Christian faith is not blind faith. It is grounded in the death and resurrection of Christ, and there is far more historical evidence that Jesus died and rose again than there is for the existence of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. We are born again to a living hope.

Hedonism cannot satisfy. Materialism cannot bring lasting fulfilment. Only a living hope can.

What would God say to Russell Brand – and to each of us? “Russell, I have made you and loved you. I have placed eternity into your heart. Death is not the end. This is eternal life – to know Me.”

This Easter

God would say to you this Easter season: don’t try to fill life with philosophies, working on your own to make life better and more fulfilling. Don’t treat religion as merely a good idea. Try Me – I made you for a relationship.

Praying that God would bless you over this Easter time, and that you would come to know the living hope we have in the death and resurrection of Christ.

Billy Fenning