Essays from West of 98: Hope
This week’s essay is a special Easter message that’s on my heart.
Today is a good day to focus on hope.
Sometimes, it can be hard to focus. We’re busy. Our attention gets pulled too many ways at once. If you’re like me, you might have five urgent tasks that all simultaneously need your attention, so you can’t focus on any of them. The things of the world have a knack for averting our gaze. We get distracted by shiny objects to pursue. Sometimes those shiny objects are worthy goals. Other times, they’re just meaningless, material things that truly don’t matter. We get distracted by all the negativity of a fallen, sinful world. We see everything that’s wrong, that’s appalling, and that needs fixing, and we have the impulse to lash out against it.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a time and place for the shiny objects and there’s a time for fixing things and battling the negative. But on Easter Sunday—Resurrection Day—there’s one matter that should hold our focus. I’m working on that focus today and I encourage you to do the same. Jesus’ tomb was empty on Resurrection Day but it wasn’t empty to give us time to chase shiny objects or focus our energy battling negative things. Jesus’ tomb was empty for the greatest, most important of purposes—to give us hope of salvation by His perfect grace.
Here are a few thoughts from Easter Sunday at our house. We can unfollow and ignore people and pages on social media who sow only discord and division. Remember, they’re not doing for anything other than their own personal enrichment. We can reach out to others and tell them we love them, especially those people in our world who might be a little hard to love. Maybe they need to hear our love more than we realize. We can look past the petty disagreements of the world and focus on the simple humanity that unites us all. We’re different in many ways, and that’s what makes each of us unique and what makes life interesting, but ultimately we’re all just people made in the image of God. Every single one of us.
Jesus calls us to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. That instruction is found in the Sermon on the Mount. It is extraordinarily simple, but very powerful. Like salt, we should have a savory effect on all that we touch. If we don’t have that effect on others around us, then what good are we? As the light of the world, our lives should shine in such a way that draws others nearer to Christ. If our light is hidden or if it repels others, then we’re doing it wrong.
There’s a lot going on in the world. Most of it really doesn’t matter. Today, I choose hope. I choose to focus on being the salt of the earth and the light of the world. What better day to pursue that focus than today, the most hopeful of all days?
We love you all,
James, Lauren, Miriam, and Ruth Decker
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the “West of 98” website and forthcoming podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these and other essays at westof98.substack.com.