GREAT HOPE
We all hope for something in this life. We may hope for a new job, we may hope for our kids to finally start listening, we may hope for friends to finally start showing up, we may hope to stop being overlooked, and we may hope for our family members to just stop being so “them”. Looking at these things as though there’s a sense of saving or an ultimate resolve that’ll come from their fulfillment. But then those things happen and then we look for something new to hope for. Something new to look forward to save. We find ourselves hoping for a feeling. We hope for things to be fixed. For there to be no wrong. But as the people of God who have been given His word, we’re reminded hope isn’t just a feeling. Hope has substance, hope itself is placed on someone rather than a thing or feeling. In the Psalms we see this multiple times:
“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation”
Psalm 42:11 (ESV)
“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.”
Psalm 39:7 (ESV)
Biblical hope finds it’s gripping and foothold in God. The people of Israel could hope because their God was the same God who rescued them from Egypt and remembered His covenant with Abraham. The Psalmist could hope in God because God was the one who delivered every single time. Biblical hope remains hope even when the current state of things seem as though there is no chance of the hope being fulfilled. We too today can hope because Advent allows us and calls us to remember the first arrival of our Savior. Jesus of Nazareth. He came as a baby in a manger, lived a complete life, was crucified on real wood, died an undeserved death, and raised from the grave with true life. In this season of Advent we are to celebrate the first coming of our Lord but in that same vein we await His second coming. Because Jesus not only came, died, and rose again but ascended and promised to come once more.
The hope of the Christian looks back to the risen Christ so that they can look forward to the day when He will come again. We hope for the day in which “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Revelation 21:3-4 (ESV)
So then how can we better embody hope over the course of this week? Take time to pray and ask God to help you see the beautiful hope that Jesus’ arrival brings for us today.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,”
1 Peter 1:3-4 (ESV)