Keep Your Fork

Too often "resurrection hope" is a mere rationalization for our inability to change things. Actually, resurrection hope is the clarion call for engagement with the dragons of life and a forward look to something better.

A friend writes:

"Last year I hoped that the Orioles would make it to the World Series. They didn't.

"I also hoped that my investments would do well enough to sustain dreams of early retirement. They didn't.

"I occasionally hope that creative types will use their talents to produce the kind of art and music and television and movies that uplift our spirits and inspire us to try to be better than we are. Last I checked there is still a Warner Brothers Television Network.

"When my mother found out she had breast cancer, I hoped that she would be able to avoid a radical mastectomy. She didn't.

"When 6-year-old Ryan Caspar lay in the hospital suffering from a malignant brain tumor, I hoped for a cure. He died."

When you feel like the patron saint of lost causes, it is easy to ask whether God has abandoned us, or whether God is there at all.

This is precisely what was beginning to happen among the Christians Peter addresses in today's passage. They were new Christians who were in...