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We are familiar with varied leadership styles and studying those who have impacted our world of corporations, politics, and management dynamics. In the current political climate we can study both candidates and voters to contrast rhetoric, vision, and structure in order to understand both negative and positive possibilities for our future.

Easter is the ultimate celebration of life!

It is not, as some friends have interpreted for me, a wonderful reminder that we must leave a heritage of love and morality when we come to death. It is not a touching story of a great philosopher/prophet who gave away his life as an ultimate sacrifice to show us a better way to live. It is not a reminder that we are only truly different from all other creatures when we center our life on self-sacrifice and exemplary ethics.

The New Testament concept of hope is essentially governed by the Old Testament. When fixed on God, hope embraces expectation, trust and patient waiting for fulfillment.

In recent weeks a gunman joined a prayer group and then killed several of them with his firearm. More recently in Hesston, Kan., a local Mennonite community, a gunman killed three residents and then was killed by the local chief of police to protect others from being killed. Many Christians can need protection from persons who are programmed to kill.

When we arrive at Easter every year we know the story and repeat the rituals, often without rediscovering the breathtaking reality of God’s love. On a recent Sunday my worship experience was energized by new joy as the choir sang an unfamiliar anthem based on the idea of Jesus’ suffering and death as a dance of joy!

People by nature have wanted to name things since the Garden of Eden. If it isn’t finding shapes in the cloud or identifying a taste, it’s giving significance to days, weeks and months.

How do you deal with failure? Are you devastated, consumed with guilt and the sense that your life will carry a negative burden and the future will never be better? Do you blame failure on circumstances or someone else? Or, do you find a way to make amends, to learn new behavior, to take responsibility and fashion positive values?

The time is the Feast of Tabernacles where water and light were significant reminders for the Jews of the time God provided direction for them when they were leaving Egypt for a new freedom in the promised land. The scripture declares that “the Lord was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them on the way and in a pillar of fire by night to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night” (Exodus 13:21).

When you celebrate the Lord’s Supper, consider that Passover in Jerusalem when Jesus was preparing to die for us. The disciples were not paying attention. They were thinking about themselves. Jesus did not condemn them or turn them away. Instead, he opened his heart to them again, loved and encouraged them and looked to the cross.

What do you need to be content with your place in life? The dictionary defines contentment as satisfied, adequately happy, being in a satisfied state, tranquil happiness. How do these terms measure up to your own definition of contentment? Probably some of them at least give consideration to how you feel when you are content.