My granddaughters are currently very excited as they look ahead to a birthday and Christmas. They have been promised certain things (balloons, cake, presents, parties) and they talk about these things eagerly and with the confident assurance that comes from knowing...

God is sometimes described as ‘the hope of Israel’, ‘its Saviour in times of distress.’ (Jeremiah 14:8, see also Jeremiah 17:13). Hope can be hard to define, but Emily Dickinson said, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without...

One of the most inspiring stories of hope can be found in the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a prophet who lived in exceedingly difficult times, when God’s people had been defeated by the invading Babylonians and carried off from their homeland to live as exiles in a...