"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today."

- MLK, 1963

In the early 1960’s, marked with a vision for the future, Martin Luther King emphatically proclaimed his message of racial equality and reconciliation. In the midst of oppression and horrible injustice, King saw that things could be different, that things should be different, and so he acted. 

Hope is a powerful thing.

Whether we realize it or not, the things we hope for drastically effect the decisions we make in life. Our hopes affect the risks we take, the products we buy, the things we invest in, because where we see ourselves in the future changes the way we live in the present.

However, often times when we really look at the world we don’t find hopeful situations. No matter what we’re promised we don’t see a sparkling future but instead encounter a broken world full of broken people. We find a persevering sufferance—pain and oppression that can’t be beaten. Children go hungry. Women are exploited. Communities are forgotten…the list goes on and on. Behind every campaign for change sits another, more concealed system of exploitation. Life seems simply a closed cycle of death and corruption.

The world is very broken. There is no hope. 

But here’s the kicker. We do have hope. We have a radical, beautiful, life-altering hope—Jesus. On the third morning, Sunday, he rose from the grave. Wrapped in that Sunday morning is the  promise of something completely new, something

completely exterior to the cycle of death so apparent in this world. Wrapped in that Sunday morning is the promise that death will be overcome. And so through Jesus we find hope in a God who promises to raise this world from the dead. We encounter a God who is committed to renewing a “good” creation—to making all things new.

We find a promise of a time when all suffering will cease, when the lion will lay down with the lamb, when the poor will be lifted up, when the tears will be wiped away from our eyes. We encounter a promise where heaven will unite with earth and all will be well.

This is a big hope. And like all big hopes it should effect how we live. If we truly trust that God will redeem this world, then we can’t just sit by and wait. If we truly believe that things will be different then we’ll act differently. 

Martin Luther King believed that his children could live in a better world. He had hope in a new way of life. And so he fought for it. He gave everything he had for peace and justice. Everything.

This is the power of hope—action. 

This is our mission as Christians, to spread this hope. We are called to take these promises seriously, to live them and breathe them. Yet these promises, these hopes, are not just for the future. They are for now. They effect now. And so we live into these hopes of peace and reconciliation. We build wells, feed the poor, and invest in relationships. We welcome the outsiders in, fight for justice and love the people in our lives. We remember Sunday and act as if the kingdom of heaven is here. We live as people of hope in the midst of hopelessness.

This is the power of hope.