Mensajes de Esperanza

Do you like ice cream? Has it ever happened to you, that on a very hot day, you go to the store to buy an ice cream, and once you buy it, and start enjoying it, suddenly, BOOM! it falls to the floor? Well, it happened to me recently, and I must confess that it did not feel good at all. It was hot, I was really craving ice cream, and I had no more cash with me and the store did not accept credit cards, so I ended going back home disappointed…and without ice cream. --- How nice it would be if everything in life went well, right? If we never had to face the realities of failure, or the frustration and discouragement that we feel when things don’t go as we had hoped. When I was serving in the local church, as a pastor, every day I witnessed many things that did not go well. Marriages destroyed. Fragmented families. Dreams that did not come true. Friendships that ended abruptly. Unemployment that created financial crises. Diagnoses of catastrophic disease that bring our world upside down...

Read in the Bible: 1 Samuel 17:32-47 Almost 5 years ago, our region was hit by Hurricane Sandy - an unprecedented storm for this generation here in NJ. For many, this was the first time they felt the force of the sea and the winds as it manifested during the afternoon and evening of that October 29 th . The day after the storm, we all woke up to new and somber reality. Something no one ever imagined living, especially for those in towns closer to the Jersey Shore. The photos and videos being shared on the TV looked like they were from a horror movie. The number of deaths reported was more than our minds could process. Very soon, the magnitude of the damage and the needs began to emerge: millions without electricity, thousands of refugees in shelters outside their homes, lack of the most basic needs (drinking water, food, and clothing). Floods, massive damage to property, people had no heat - the list seemed endless. Back then, I was serving in Oasis UMC in Ple...

Society is going through many crises that are seriously affecting the quality of life of people around the world. Even months after the elections, there are still many tensions in the area of ​​politics and government, h ere in the US, in many of our countries of origin, and in the international sphere. We see on TV horrible scenes of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, provocations by the North Korean government, and tensions with Russia. In the social sphere, very delicate and conflicting issues are being discussed that keep the country divided: firearms control, immigration, religious tolerance, access to health care, economics, and threats of war, among others. And as if this was not enough, there are also everyday problems, from which it seems no one can escape. Crises at home, marriages that wobble (and many divorces), problems in work, finances, and / or illnesses not expected. When you talk to people, and they share with your their anxieties and worries, in m...

Read: John 11: 17-27 | Ezekiel 37: 1-14 During the season of Lent this year, the Christian lectionary (a set of guided Scripture readings mostly used by Catholic and Protestant churches), has taken us to consider different important moments of Jesus' ministry through the stories we find in the Bible in the Gospel according to John. Something very peculiar about the stories that John shares with us is that he tells us much of Jesus' ministry through the encounters Jesus had with different people, just like you and me. Through these different encounters we can learn very special and important things about who Jesus is and what He can be for us, if we believe. For example, the encounter of Jesus with a Samaritan woman at the well, reveals, among many other things, that Jesus is the water that quenches our spiritual thirst once and for all. The moment when Jesus miraculously fed more than five thousand people, reveals the He is the bread that feeds our hunger. The time w...