Do you have hope? or are you just hoping you do?

Ok, first things first. No I haven't posted in forever. No I'm not ignoring the blog or my readers... both of them. It really comes down to two reasons:

1.) I much prefer to talk to people in person, my thoughts flow from conversation, so often I find it difficult to write on topics. Without the give and take of conversation I tend to try and answer the questions before they are asked and rambling becomes almost a certainty. Sometimes it's just difficult to know where to begin, and I don't like to write without some sort of a plan. Not a good reason, but still a reason.

2.) My schedule has been crazy the last month or so. I have emcee'd a high school music program, we've had two guest speakers in church (one of whom will be mentioned later in this post), I am playing a part in the grade school musical this week, I leave for a 10 day trip to Guatemala missions trip this Saturday, we have another guest speaker coming at the end of may, planning for our trip to the CFN conference in Carrollton, GA, in June, and planning/fundraising for a missions trip to Mexico in July. Anyway, I currently have multiple irons in multiple fires and by the time I have time to post a blog I find myself quite exhausted. :D

However, today I have a specific purpose to post. Our most recent guest speaker was a man by the name of Bill Allison. If you don't know of him, Bill is an amazing man of God, an even more amazing father and husband, and one of my personal heroes/mentors. He is a missionary to the local church. He is the Executive Director of Cadre Ministries and they work to help equip "volunteers" at the local church. (I put that in quotes because if you talk to Bill long you'll find he doesn't like the term volunteers, but for my purposes it's the best term here.) I STRONGLY encourage you to check out his blog at http://cupojoewithbill.blogspot.com/ and the Cadre website at http://www.cadreministries.com/. This past Sunday Bill spoke on the topic of hope. It's pretty evident our nation is currently at a time where hope can be hard to see in most people. However, as believers we should be people of Hope. Bill challenged us to read Genesis 37-50 at a pace of 2 chapters a day. This is the story of Joseph and there are a lot of lessons on hope that can be found in this passage. What I would love to see happen is that you would join me in this challenge and would read these chapters and then post your thoughts on hope. I don't want to say much about the topic in order to allow discussion to flow, however I will say that Bill contends (and I agree) there are two types of hope. One type is the "i wish" or uncertain hope. The other is certain hope.

SO, feel free to join us in this. Post your thoughts on hope. Post your thoughts on the lessons of Joseph. As a closing note, be aware that I will gladly join the conversation and will respond to anyone who posts, but if you post later than Friday, May 8, I will be on my way to the airport and won't be back for a bout a week and a half, so you're on your own after that. God bless.

- Mateo