What the World Needs Now--Hope

We are finishing up our series on the resurrection tonight in our college Bible Class.  I think about all the illnesses, cancers and failing bodies around us.  Surely God is using this suffering to point us to real hope.  Hope that is seen is no hope at all, Paul says.  The things we tend to hope for (good health, more money, a mate) are all too small a vision compared to the cosmic vision of hope God is trying to give us.  In Christ, at the last trumpet, we will be imperishable, immortal.  Strangely, this is what much of the world wants, but they don't want to follow Christ to get it.   

We finish up tonight with the end of 1 Corinthians 15.  I'm going to ask those who come to share with us their most meaningless job and their most meaningful work.  Paul says to always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor is not in vain. 
On top of that he says stand firm and be immovable in this desire to always give yourselves fully to the Lord's work.  Why?  Because the Lord's work is not in vain...and vain could also be translated "empty."  The Lord's work is never empty or meaningless.  The resurrection assures us that all our work in the Lord is meaningful.  And N.T. Wright suggests that somehow the work we do now will carry over into eternity.

Now that's work I want to be part of--work that will not be in vain when the Lord returns!