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Hope is a strange thing...

Illustration
Trinity Sunday | 1st Sunday after Pentecost - C
Romans 5:1-5
Hope is a strange thing. It does not always come in the way we expect. I have a friend with cancer. When she learned she was suffering from this disease, "suffering" was indeed the appropriate word to describe what she went through. One day she felt in control of her own life, the next she had entered a world of surgeons and oncologists, of painful surgery and even more painful chemotherapy. The cancer was bad, and it had spread, yet day to day as I walked through this strange and terrible world with her I saw grow in her a fierce and powerful endurance.
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This story begins with gift -- with blessed gift -- with miraculous, blessed giftedness. And I will even tell you now the theme of the story: if you keep your eye on the giftedness of everything, then you yourself can be a gift, you can be a giver, rather than a hoarder.
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