What's it feel like to be a Messiah?

There are certainly many who would see Barack Obama as a messiah figure - the 'anointed one' who is the answer to all their problems. I'm sure Obama is only too aware of this fact and realises the dangers of trying to live up to totally unrealistic expectations. But there has certainly been a sense of hope that the election of Obama has generated.

Hope that things can change, and that they don't always have to be the way they are.

Hope that comes from having a line drawn under a painful past.

Hope that comes from the prospect of a new start.

Hope that comes from knowing that the president can identify with you and therefore understands where you're coming from, and therefore may do something about it.

These were the hopes of many about two thousand years ago, when another Messiah figure emerged on the scene.

A man who healed the sick and raised the dead, a man who came back from the dead and so a man who says things don't have to be the way they always have. Even death can be turned back. A man who says that no matter how bleak things may seem there is always hope.

A man who allows us to draw a line under a painful past because his death on a cross means that we can know forgiveness for our past, and although we can't undo our past we no longer need to be held back by our past.

A man who gives the promise of a new start, a life with a purpose, a life which the New Testament describes as essentially a new life. A future that is not defined by the past.

A God who became a human being, who knows what it is like to be hungry, tired, sad, tempted ... A God who can identify with us, and meet us at our point of need.

There is a heavy weight of expectation on Obama's shoulders. And whatever hopes we may have in him and for him and for the next four years of American politics, ultimately we must put our hope in Jesus.