Hope in Suffering

Habakkuk 1:1-4 How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘violence!’ But you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; There is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralysed And justice never prevails The wicked hem in the righteous So that justice is perverted

Isaiah 53:10 “The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he'd see life come from it - life, life, and more life”

Romans 5:1-5 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

The Gates of Hope Victoria Safford Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope - Not the prudent gates of Optimism, Which are somewhat narrower. Nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; Nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, Which creak on shrill and angry hinges (People cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through) Nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of “Everything is gonna' be all right.”

But a different, sometimes lonely place, The place of truth-telling, About your own soul first of all and its condition. The place of resistance and defiance, The piece of ground from which you see the world Both as it is and as it could be As it will be; The place from which you glimpse not only struggle, But the joy of the struggle. And we stand there, beckoning and calling, Telling people what we are seeing Asking people what they see.