Pious Lutheran

Last Judgment , Jan Mandyn, 1550 Hope or Foreboding Jesus is going to return with certainty The world faces Jesus’ return with dread The Christian faces it with hope because our redemption is drawing near Therefore, watch yourselves, for that day will suddenly come, and either it will fill you with hope or foreboding. When most Americans talk about hope, we don’t usually think anything is going to actually happen, and we use the term more along the lines of a wish, a desire for something unlikely to happen. I grew up among Vikings fans, so when we say “I hope the purple people eaters win the superbowl this year,” we don’t actually expect them to win, it’s just wishful thinking. But when the scriptures speak of hope it’s not a matter of wishful thinking, but it’s a certainty, a joyful and certain expectation of what is going to happen. So when St. Paul writes in Romans: “ For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the enco...