The message of Easter is the ultimate message of real hope!
As I woke up this Good Friday morning and brushed away the fogginess of sleep, I was immediately impressed with how many parallels there are between what Easter is all about and what I dream for Partners International. Jesus came to live in our world as an ambassador of real hope. That is exactly what everyone one of us in PI has an opportunity to be as well.
We are ambassadors of real hope in the hard places of the world. Jesus knew what that meant. After all, he came from heaven to earth. Earth was a hard enough place compared to heaven, but he also choose to be born in the backwater country of Palestine, to a no-name, no-status, blue-collar couple in the manger of a smelly animal stable! Jesus’ personal ministry had specific focus on people in hard places—people in out-of-the-way villages of Galilee, people sidelined by religious elite, people rejected because of their moral mistakes and ethnic identity, even people living in leper colonies and among tombs! There was a definite WHERE aspect to the hope Jesus represented because he brought hope to those hard places. That is my dream for Partners as well. I want us to bring hope to the most hopeless places of our world. I want the least reached and least resourced areas of the world to be precisely where we build our partnering relationships.
There also was a WHEN aspect to the hope Jesus represented. Hope by nature is about waiting for something in expectancy that is still in the future. For three years Jesus shared his message of hope with friends and disciples, but they had to wait for the Easter weekend before they saw the true power of what he was talking about. Even more, on Good Friday, the moment Jesus breathed his last breath on a Roman cross was simultaneously the moment when those believers’ hope actually died. The next couple of days had to be the darkest and most hopeless they had ever experienced. But that experience made the hope that was resurrected on Easter morning more meaningful and real than ever.
We too have this WHEN aspect in our Partners' experience. Invariably we and our national partners have situations that simply take time before fulfillment can happen. Those can be dark and discouraging days. Like wondering when we’ll ever get enough help to complete our project. Like waiting and waiting for the promised funds to be raised. Like facing incredible frustration as new systems, new processes, and new changes take place. Just like Jesus’ disciples, we can lose hope at times like that. That was certainly a temptation for me last year as we grappled with organizational downsizing due to our loss of income. But how much more meaningful it is after a dark time like that to find that hope remains alive and real. That is why the story of Easter morning is so powerful. It’s a great reminder for us not to lose heart during our dark days as well. My dream is that being ambassadors of hope at Partners means we are ready to “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” with friends and partners, constantly reminding them and ourselves that, after the crucifixion of Friday, the resurrection will come on Sunday.
It struck me this morning that Jesus’ hope had a HOW aspect as well. It was always directed at people—specific, individual people. He really didn’t focus on bringing transformation to institutions or programs or systems. He touched real people with real hope. Like the woman with a hemorrhage. Like a man paralyzed for more than thirty years. Like some fishermen who wanted more meaning out of life. Those people did eventually bring transformation to institutions, but the HOW aspect of Jesus’ hope was ultimately to touch one person at a time. For them, it was a moment of personal renewal of life, of vision, of relationship. My dream is that being ambassadors of real hope in Partners is also about touching individual people in a similar way. Sure, we want to see churches planted and organizational development happen within national ministries; but day to day, the working out of our ministry needs to be expressed in how we bring real hope in real ways to real people.
And it’s happening! It happens when Linda Jo signs up another child for sponsorship. It happens when Rene Mbongo has a cup of coffee with a ministry leader in the deserts of Mali. It happens when Steve Delph lets a donor know what impact his gift will mean to the Dalits of India. It certainly happens when Amir reboots my computer after a hard-drive crash! Every day, in every aspect of our ministry, every one of us can be an ambassador of real hope for someone. That’s how I want us to be remembered most—that our global ministry got accomplished by each of us making a difference in the lives of people. . . one at a time.
Easter is the ultimate reminder that real hope exists. May this season renew our sense of privilege to be ambassadors of that same real hope to a world that so desperately needs it.
