For Expats and Missionaries, COVID-19 Was a Crossroads | Advent: Living Hope: CT Weekly

Eric Katzung’s two-year-old daughter saw snow for the first time this spring in Colorado. But the question she keeps asking is when she can eat her favorite meal again—Taiwanese clams and rice. Katzung explains that they don’t have Taiwanese food in Colorado, and his daughter says, “When can we go home?”

Katzung doesn’t know if Taiwan is home anymore. He and his three daughters, ages 5, 4, and 2, left the country in a hurry in March when coronavirus case numbers ...

What does it mean to have hope amid trying times? Hope is more than a feeling; it isn’t simply being perpetually optimistic or having a “hopeful” attitude. Scripture offers us an understanding of hope that is much more robust. Christian hope has heft, endurance, and purpose—and God is its source.

God, “in his great mercy … has given us new birth into a living hope” (1 Pet. 1:3). And it is our “God of hope” who enables us to “overflow with ...