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April 2, 2020 - Join Pastor John for a Daily Devotional

“Endless Hope”  
As we come into this new month, I am reminded of the phrase, “April showers bring May flowers.” The cold winds and grey skies of March are behind us, and we are eager for Spring to begin. Unfortunately, April is going to have its heavy “showers” this year, as the coronavirus continues to wreck havoc over our lives. The statistics of how many people might die because of the virus, or symptoms related to it, keep climbing to numbers that are unfathomable. A news report today stated that a surge in cases is still coming, and that things are going to get worse before they get better. April 2020 will feel like continuous showers with no relief in sight. 
Thankfully, we don’t have to wait until May for flowers, because this April offers to us the promise of Easter. Easter reminds us that God has the final word, and that as Christians, we live with an “endless hope.” I saw a cartoon one time of two Roman soldiers looking at the empty tomb with the stone rolled away. One says to the other, “Well, so I guess now just taxes are certain.” 
This April, God’s word shouts across two thousand years, “He is risen!” The shock waves that broke lose that stone continue down through centuries to our present moment. The Presbyterian pastor, Tim Keller, says that when people say to him, “Well, I can buy this part of Christian teaching but I have a real problem with that part.” He says, “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept everything he said; if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about anything that he said?” Easter seals the deal. Jesus is Lord! Death is dead! Hope is alive, and we are forever new!  
There are doomsayers out there who say that what we are experiencing will never get better, and that all of what we are going through is irreversible. I may not be an economist, or an expert in infectious diseases, but I do know one thing. People will not worship on Easter to say, “The stock market is dead.” They will not sing, “Commercial real estate is in the tomb.” We will not be praying over my 401k looking more like a 201k. 
The one hope that has held human beings together across every continent and culture for two millennia of difficult times of struggle, war, disease and even death is “Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.” What we thought was irreversible, God has reversed. Friends, we do not face a hopeless end. The good news is that we face an endless hope.
Chestnut Level Presbyterian Church
1068 Chestnut Level Road, Quarryville, PA 17566
Telephone: 717-548-2763