Emily's Worldview

Easter Sunday, my church was beautiful. Sunlight streaming in the clear glass windows to illuminate the pale blue walls. The soaring white ceiling over a garden of people underneath--little boys in seersucker jackets and girls in dresses with matching hair ribbons, old men with comb marks in their hair and women in pastel suits and flowered dresses and multicolored scarves.

The sermon centered around the idea that "we are Easter people living in a Good Friday world", Good Friday, of course, being the darkest day of the church year, when Jesus has been crucified and all hope seems to have died. That is exactly how I feel when I think about the world today--when I feel the worst thing has already happened and the next day brings news of something worse. But the sermon offered the idea that "we have the right to hope", even if the misery in this world is overwhelming and injustice is spreading like a stain. Regardless of the worship you do or do not attend, to hope for the impossible, to hope for a better world, to me that is the deepest form of faith. And our collective hopes are the only chance for change.