Hello blog, I’m gunna try to neglect you less.
The week before last i preached a sermon on hope. And it was one of those sermons (this happens to me from time to time) where all my best ideas about the subject came the week AFTER I preached it. Oh well, good thing my congregation loves me 
.
Anyway, i thought i would share the most important idea i had.
See the sermon was about hope. And the connection between hope and faith. The idea was that when we have a “crises of faith” it’s not really an intellectual questioning of the meta-narrative of our belief system (though that might be part of it). But most often our “crisis of faith” are born out of despair.
And then i talked about prayer, and how to pray is to hope, because to pray is to believe that a different reality is possible in the future.
But here’s the thing, that’s too much about tomorrow. I mean i still believe that, but what I have come to realize is that even more important is that to pray is to acknowledge that God is “in” the present. so I pray for my church because I believe God is “in it” and therefor it is a good worth praying for, and working for, and loving, etc.
Hope is not merely, or even primarily, a future oriented thing. To have hope is to recognize the good in the present.