Hope

Spring is finally here and with spring has come warmer weather and storms. To the agriculture community every Spring is a new start. Farmers are optimists. Every year starts with the hope that this will be the best crop ever. I enjoy hanging around with optimists who are filled with hope. 

  Spring is a time of hope. Here Sharon and I are standing on a sand dune by Lake Michigan. Every picture we have of me standing by Lake Michigan over the last 15 years I look like I am freezing. The reason for that is; I am freezing cold. I have never been on the beach by Lake Michigan when there is not a 20 mile an hour wind howling past my ears at 50 degrees. Every time I am hoping it will be warm.

Here Micah, Matthew, and Tony are with me at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting in Omaha. Yes, Sharon was there also, she is the one taking the picture. A thank you to the Oskaloosa Christian School Endowment because the Endowment owns shares in Berkshire Hathaway which allows us to get the credentials enabling us to attend the woodstock for capitalists. I keep hoping someday we will have some wealth of our own again. 

We helped paint a house for an elderly man last Saturday. Painting is not one of my favorite jobs. It is tedious work. One brush stroke at a time, slowly moving around the house. I just kept hoping I would get to the place where the next board over would be white and we were done.

Getting closer to finished. Of course it is at that point they got out the gray final coat and we started all over again.

Tulips are such a great symbol for hope. You put this brown bulb in the ground. It has no beauty, just what looks like a brown piece of garbage to someone who does not know about plants.

But look what happens when you put what looks like a a dead bulb in the ground.

That is where my true hope is. We grow old and die here and we put this dead husk in the ground but that is not the end. We Christians have hope that we will rise again. We will bloom like the tulips and our future life will be much grander than the sin wracked body we plant in the ground.

I had the privilege of officiating at the funeral of a Christian lady. She spent her last days assured that she was headed for eternity with her Lord. She knew the day was coming when she would rise from the grave and all her pain would be gone.
 Now that is Hope.