Passover Hope

Naomi turned three last week. THREE! She wasn't even a year old when I was diagnosed with, and then miraculously healed from, stage 4 cancer. Since then she learned to crawl, walk, run and talk. She's so much fun I can't help but smile when I look at her, and the days that I do so with sadness because of what is coming for us are long gone. God has restored our family and allowed us to move on, with a stronger faith and love than we had before it all began. But I will admit that as the time has passed I am farther removed from cancer, and more focused on normal daily struggles. I am giving my testimony next week and realized that is the very first time since it all began that I haven't had another opportunity to do so on my calendar. I have become less of a cancer survivor and more of a woman and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that.

I passionately promised God that I would never forget, never stop bragging about His awesomeness. Not in an attempt to "make a deal" with Him, but because I truly don't want to. I don't want to become the person I was before. To move back to my old definition of hope, which was more like "accept and except that bad things will happen but really want good ones" and back to the biblical definition that I learned, "the urgent expectation" that we all need. That we should all cling to.

I just read about the four different ways the word and concept of hope is used in the Bible. They are all awesome, so check it out here. The most interesting one to me is with Rahab in the Old Testament. In Joshua 2 we saw that Rahab was a prostitute who hid God's men for Him. When they destroyed the city later, they had her hang a scarlet cord out the window to show they should pass over her place. That scarlet cord is a tiqvah, which is actually an unbreakable cord, symbolizing our unbreakable hope in God. And I'm sure it's not coincidence that of course, during passover, God had His people put scarlet blood over their doorposts so the angel of death would pass over those homes...and that Jesus was celebrating the Seder meal from passover during the last supper, when He demonstrated how He would actually bear all our scarlet sins on the cross. And when it comes to judgment, our sins are passed over if we put our hope in Him.

Now that I've so smoothly brought this post about hope around to passover and Easter, I would like to invite all of you locals to a teaching Yaacov is doing about passover on Thursday, April 17 from 6-8 pm at Four Oaks Community Church. It will have elements of a traditional Seder meal that Jesus and the disciples were celebrating for the Last Supper (Lk 22, Mth 26, etc), and he will show how the things He said were explaining how His actions fulfilled the rituals his predecessors hadn't understood. It is always a good time and this one will be shorter than many. You don't have to be a Four Oaks member or have any idea what passover is about to attend. You might be able to see a description here, and if not email me to RSVP or for more info.

1 Peter 1:3-9
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.