As for me, I look to the Lord for help. I wait confidently for God to save me, and my God will certainly hear me. (Micah 7:7)Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Hope. Hope is a centerpiece of our lives and without it, our lives become meaningless. The hope that God sent us was manifested in that little baby born on Christmas.
He is hope.
Someone once said that it is not the number of bad things that happen to you that make you depressed, but the lack of good things to counterbalance it.
That lack of good things brings a lack of hope. And one who has a lack of hope has nothing to look forward to.
That is, of course, why you work your entire life, hoping and saving for retirement. When that hope is taken away, or shattered in some way, it makes your life less.
We get married as a hope for our future happiness and companionship. We have children as a hope for someone to love us and for the future of humanity. We do a lot as a hope for something yet to come.
The same with our relationship with God. We do not come to him only as a hope to not be punished, but as a hope for a future happiness.
Our hope is in him. And it is what keeps us going.
Hope keeps you going when times are hard, when it seems there are no real answers, when you life is in shambles. It is your hope in God.
And he will never let you down. We hope toward the end we have in him. We hope in his promises. As Psalm 33:20 says: We put our hope in the Lord. He is our help and our shield.
That hope doesn’t necessarily mean that he will never allow anything to happen. In the book of Hebrews, it says that even though bad things happened, they placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection. They knew this was not all there was.
Hebrews 11:1 says that Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. That is hope: confidence in what we do not see.
We do not see God. We do not see his grace. We do not see his end plan for us. We do not see him at all. Not really. Not with our eyes. Yet we believe.
That is hope, believing on what we do not see. Believing in retirement from a job you have worked for years, believing your money is in the bank, believing in your husband or wife: those are all hope.
And they may fail. But God never will. It is that hope in him that saves.
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