A Community Where Hope is Alive (1 Peter 1:1-9)

To close our series called Recovering the Church, we look at what it means to be a community where hope is found. Yet, this makes us ask, "What is hope?" Henri Nouwen once wrote, "Hope does not mean that we will avoid or be able to ignore suffering, of course. Instead, hope born of faith becomes matured and purified through difficulty. The surprise we experience in hope, then, is not that, unexpectedly, things turn out better than expected. For even when they do not, we can still live with a keen hope. The basis of our hope has to do with the One who is stronger than life and suffering. Faith opens us up to God's sustaining and healing presence." We will explore this concept of living hope.