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“We experience a roller coaster of hope in life. Sports being one of them. Another one that we experience this is in a political season. I talked about the different emotions people may be feeling with the results of the elections a week and a half ago. Generally, those sort of emotions in that roller coaster of hope, happens every couple years or every four years. There’s a lot of excitement about where we may be going as a country or a lot of despair. Kind of depends on who is in the White House. I understand some of the emotions behind this because arguably the position of president is arguably the most important and powerful one in terms of what happens in the world. Especially if you are a Christian or not a Christian. Could you imagine how that might be amplified? As the West became more secular, religion would not go away but would move into the realm of politics. And I think there’s some truth to that. If a person’s politics is basically their religion. How would you feel if your religion lost? You can empathize from the perspective of a Christian. What if Jesus died and stayed dead? Talk about the hopelessness or the despair you might feel. Sometimes even as Christians, we can fall prey to some of the despair simply from the state of our world. And sadness is a real feeling. We had a series on the Psalms a couple of months ago. One was on lament. Like we don’t do a great job of holding space for sadness and for people to grieve. We know that even God grieves. We know that all of creation is groaning so there is a level that that is natural. But what about hope?”