Emphasis Preaching Journal

We are to tell the world about the tree, the tomb, and the trumpet, proclaiming the good news wherever we are and wherever we go to people living in a troubled world. Peter L. Steinke had it right when he said: "The gospel is God's remedy for a futile, decaying, and groaning world ... He's got the whole world in his hands, and on his mind, too, when he inserts the resurrection of Christ into history. The resurrection is God's will to liberate a decaying world from death: the resurrection is not our answer for our longing. The resurrection is God's answer to his own creative love for his whole creation ... The resurrection is the story of the gift of God ... It is not the fulfillment of our wishes, not even the hallowing of our deepest longings.
"We have no power to raise ourselves by our own willful bootstraps. If the resurrection depended on our will to die with distinction and significance, the spirit of it all would be desire not hope. But desire centers on the self, the private being, with the capacity for pleasure and happiness. The object of desire is the individual self. Desire is all-consuming. But once the desire is filled, it is removed, and there is nothing but emptiness -- a return to the futility, despair, and groaning. Take not, therefore, of Paul's description of the resurrection as that which produces hope and waiting 'with patience.' If anything, desire is impatient, a possessive drive. Hope waits and longs to receive." -- Smith