Christ our Hope Anglican Church Valparaiso

We must acknowledge we are blind and that we only see so far as God shows us. God invites us to reject living in the dark and instead live in the Light. We are commanded to try, and keep trying, to discern what is pleasing to the Lord, and fully depend on God's light for each step.

When we say no to God, we’re saying no to rest, to water, to bread. We're saying no to the good that he is offering us. Think about the things that the people of Israel were stubborn about: they turned away from blessing to live in the desert. What God asks us for is a yes that leads us into life.

Faith is living in a future reality. But not because we can see it. We have faith and hope not because we can see the promise but because we can see the one who made the promise. We can see him wandering in the wilderness of our exile, we can see the one who made the garden, hungry. We can trust him because we can see him, and seeing him we see the great, rescuing love of God.

We can't repair what's broken and twisted up inside of ourselves. And we don't have any way to remedy our guilt. But Jesus succeeded where Adam failed and offers us a new and better inheritance.

Our hope is that seeing Jesus, we will be transformed. That Seeing him, our hearts will be so enraptured with his glory and goodness, and with the love of God, that we will be forever changed.

Jesus tells people who they are. We are Salt: the seasoning of the OT sacrifices and a sign of God's covenant. We are Light: the Beacon on the Hill, the city on the mountain, God's temple, and the expression of his word.

The beatitudes declare Jesus — he is the suffering one and he is the blessed one, and he is the one who brings blessing to all. And they declare Jesus especially to the sick and weak and poor and oppressed— to the crowds he's gathered who are longing for another kingdom

Repentance is about turning toward Jesus. We’re the always-turning-towards Jesus people. We're always turning our faces and our hearts and our minds to Jesus: to see him, and so that seeing him, we can be changed and follow him to new life.

In our baptism, as the free gift of God, by casting ourselves upon the Jesus as our savior, we have all become sons of God. And when you hear the word “son" in the context of baptism, we really ought to think of Jesus's baptism and the voice that speaks from heaven: this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.

As little children, we should follow the example of the child Jesus. We are not yet what we will be. There is no end to the growth we can and will experience in God. Our hearts, abilities, and thoughts are child-like and unfinished. We should let our immaturity remind us of the hope we have in God's desire for us to "grow-up" in his everlasting love.

Jesus comes as light into the deep darkness of the world, and he comes with the power of creation, of life, and with the presence of God. His arrival is an invitation for us to lay down the weapons of darkness that we use to protect ourselves and to trust him to be our rescuer.

The wonder of the Incarnation is that God came all the way down to dwell with us… we could not climb to heaven to see him, could not even enter the holy place, and so the holy one tore down the gates of the world and brought his holiness out into our wilderness. He descended and descended and descended until the word that was spoken became the Word in flesh one night in Judea.

Jesus came to show us the Father and to open blind eyes. Our call as his people is to look away from the distractions around us (both good and bad) and turn our opened eyes toward God.

“Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.” In Jesus, we see God’s welcome and we are invited to repent of our ways and live like the good king who came to serve.

What the end of Revelation shows us—what the end of the whole cosmos shows us—is that everything in creation, from the beginning to the end, was designed by God to tell the story of Jesus Christ. Marriage and civilization, days and seasons—all of it has always been about Jesus.

Built upon the foundation of the Apostles, we enter the New Jerusalem through gates that remind us that, like the 12 tribes of Israel, we are all God's adopted children. These images have layers of meaning, as we, God's people, are the city of God; we are His Temple, as He makes us perfect for Himself.

God made us in all the complexity of our relationships to image him, to shine his glory as it reflects off of our God-shaped lives, and what is coming for us is better than even our best longings.

The wonders of our great inheritance in Jesus Christ are so majestic and incomprehensible that we need divine help to grasp them.