A Great Redeemer

This weekend at Shoreline East, we plan to introduce a new song by Tommy Walker called I Have A Hope. You can catch a clip of it here. It is such a happy song, with a fun kinda country groove. It makes me smile. But more than that, I love the message: "my life's not over, there's still hope for me, I have a future, because the God of heaven loves me."

My prayer is that our guests will catch a glimpse of the hope we've found in Christ and believe, even if it doesn't yet make sense in the middle of their circumstances, that there is hope for them as well! We have a GREAT REDEEMER! And he didn't pay the clearance rack sale price for our redemption. He paid an exorbitant cost and says we are worth it all. Every penny....every stripe upon his back, every labored breath. We are worth it all.

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the story of Ruth and Boaz, her kinsman-redeemer. Ruth, as a young woman, became a childless widow. She is a foreigner gathering leftovers to eek out an existence. But when Boaz enters the story, everything changes. Poverty is wiped away. Baskets that were empty are over-flowing. Bitterness is turned to joy. Perhaps because I am a mother, the most beautiful part of her story to me is that Ruth's barren womb is filled with life. LIFE! There was death - but now - there's life! A legacy of redemption we clearly see in Matthew 1. Everything that was lost is restored. Everything that was wrong is made right. That's what a redeemer does. That's what Christ did for me, and I'm believing that seeds of redemption will be planted on Saturday.