When the word "HOPE" means something

Yesterday I came across the web page for Hope Lutheran Church in Aurora, Colorado, an evangelical, confessional, liturgical, Bible-believing Lutheran church and member of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. It also has a web master who knows how to design an easy-to-navigate web page and a pastor with a heart for communicating the Gospel from the pulpit, from Sunday school, and with decently current technology. So many churches (and libraries, businesses and schools) seem to have cartoonists and quasi-lunatics on contract for web design with a cacophony of colors, hidden links, and wiggling widgets. I was looking through their key to the events of Holy Week, and now the names and places really jump out at me after so recently visiting Jerusalem, the Upper Room, Caiaphas' home, the Mount of Olives, and Gethsemane. There are many Christians who want to focus exclusively on a "social justice" message for Jesus, but 1) one-third of the Gospels are devoted to one week of his life, and 2) all the moral and ethical values Jesus taught had already been given to the Jews long before his birth. He wasn't needed for that message; he was needed for our salvation.