While the puzzle is hard, perhaps impossible, to complete, many of the individual pieces are extraordinary and inspirational. Isaiah gave us many such pieces, including this one we examine today. It is an important piece of the puzzle and worthy of our time. It is a piece shaped by hope and colored by anticipation. The End, he says, is the work of God. God will send Messiah to establish justice, secure peace, reveal truth, and uncover beauty. I like this piece; I understand it; I am helped by this piece; I find inspiration with this piece; I am filled with hope as I contemplate this piece of the end time puzzle. It is for me a blessed hope; it is the hope of blessing.

God Gives Us Hope for the End

"Hope in God," the Bible says.

Recently, nine miners were trapped 240 feet below the surface, 40 feet of dirt and 200 feet of solid rock. Water was rising; they had one lunch pail between them; they wrote notes to their families, bound themselves together and prayed; then they waited. Their salvation was in the hands of others. They were outstanding miners - veterans of many years in the mines; but they were helpless to save themselves. They waited to be rescued. All they had was hope.

Above ground, there was also hope. Their hope was also expressed through fervent prayer; and also with maps, compass, drill and bit. While those below ground waited, those above ground worked. Both were propelled by hope. This combination of waiting and working is a wonderful commentary on the nature of hope.

Hope is the gift of God. "Hope endures," Paul wrote. Because hope endures, we embrace the future with anticipation and delight. Hope is rooted in the future, is tied to the future. "Hope ties itself yonder," Carl Sandberg wrote, and rightly so. Hope is that which keeps us connected to tomorrow, to next year, to the next century, to the coming of Jesus, to "the appearing of our great God and Savior," as Paul describes it. Hope is this end time word from Isaiah: "You who bring good tidings to Zion, go up to a high mountain; You who bring good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up your vice with a shout."

It is good news because it is God news!

Hope is the gift of God by which we reach out to the future, seize it, and pull it back into the present. Hope is infusing the present with the future. It is the power of the future to transform the present. Hope takes its inspiration from the future and transforms it into perspiration today. Hope gets things done because it takes its pattern from the future.

"I see things that are not," one president said, "and ask, why not?" We see things that are not yet, things that will be, things that are coming, and ask "Why not now? Why not today? Why not here and now?"

We see a coming kingdom that is just, kind, merciful, righteous and altogether lovely and ask "Why not now?" If the future God has revealed is salvation and life and resurrection and transformation, then such a vision alters the present by empowering us to rejoice, to embrace, to reconcile and to serve. We can live today in the power and promise of tomorrow.