Hope
Last Sunday we lit the first Advent candle at church, the candle of hope. Hope. The dictionary defines it as: To wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment. Or To have confidence; trust. This talk of hope caused me to think about the hopes that I have. I decided that I could separate my hopes into three categories, trivial hopes, little hopes and huge hopes.
My trivial hopes would include the hope that the 30 minutes of shoveling I did yesterday morning at 7:00am would rack enough Weight Watcher activity points to mitigate any unauthorized eating I might engage in during the day. Or that we would have the job of garage organizing done in time to get both cars in the garage before the snow arrived.
A little hope, that would be the hope that my constant repeating of the phrase “jewelry is ALWAYS a tasteful gift” to my husband would be influential in his Christmas gift decisions. Or it could be the hope that Tucker, our cross-eyed Siamese mix would stay off the beautifully set Thanksgiving table (at least while my family and guests were present).
I had a huge hope that our moving to Northern Idaho would be a way for me to be a blessing to my mother who had sacrificed so much for her three children. It was so exciting to think about being in the same town with her and not so many states apart.
Placing our hopes in the things of this world is a toss of the dice. The world cannot be counted on and so our hopes can be quickly dashed or circumstances surrounding our hopes may require quick alterations of expectations.
For instance, I learned that my 30 minutes of vigorous shoveling amounts to a measly 2 Weight Watcher activity points…big whoopee.
Both cars are in the garage but my husband and I have come to the realization that a two car garage does not mean a 2 SUV garage. The payoff for having dry, warm cars are the contortions we have to go through to get in those warm cars. Only one car is accessible and to drive that one you have to climb in through the passenger seat. In order to drive the other car, one car must be moved and we have worked out quite a lovely choreography for garbage days in order move a car in order to get the garbage can out of the garage and on the curb.
My darling husband will probably still think that a practical gift of technology will be a much better way to prove his love than a frivolous piece of jewelry and the cat did indeed manage to choose the most inopportune moment (translation, in front of all my family and friends) to make a flying leap for the turkey platter.
And last year, on November 11th as we drove non-stop from southern California to our new home in Northern Idaho. My hope of fun filled days with my mother changed to a hope that we would just make it in time to see her before she passed away. She had been hospitalized unexpectedly the day prior to our scheduled move date and she died four days after we emptied the moving van and moved into our new home here.
People have had hopes since God created us. In some writing I did for Advent this year I talked about the Israelites and their HUGE hope. At the time of Christ’s birth, God had not spoken in a new way to His people for about 400 years. They had lived under the reign of Herod, a tyrant who tortured individuals and tore communities apart. The people were in utter poverty and in the 40 years prior to Christ’s birth hardly a day went by without someone being sentenced to death. They hoped for the advent of a king who would come and rescue them with swords blazing and soldiers riding at his side. Their hope was in an earthly king and that hope was not realized.
Hopes are not bad but what I realized in this little “hope inventory” I did was that as a Christ follower, I had another category of hope that had nothing to do with my expectations regarding the things of the world or my circumstances. That category is my “hope in Christ”.
When our hopes are tied up in the things of God, we don’t just have expectation, we have assurance. Assurance that He is working for good in our lives and that His will for us is so much better than our narrow view of what we want for ourselves.
I think about Naomi, standing at that crossroad, bereft and grieving. She had no earthly possessions and she had lost the most precious gifts God had given her, her husband and her sons. She was returning to the home of her youth as a widow, which was just about the lowest rung of the social scale at that time. Only men could own property and there were no men left in her family. She was walking toward a life where her very survival would depend on the good will of others. All the hopes she had at her wedding, the hopes she had for her children had dissipated like dust in the wind. As far as Naomi was concerned her glass was not half empty, it had been completely drained.
In the first chapter of Ruth we hear the desolation in her voice when she urges her daughters in law to return to their homes, "Go back, my dear daughters. Why would you come with me? Do you suppose I am still able to bear sons who would become your future husbands? Go back, dear daughters—leave me and return to your homes where you still have a chance at a full life. Even if a miracle happened and I had sons would you wait around until they were old enough for you to marry? No, dear girls, this is a bitter pill for me to swallow God has dealt me a hard blow, He has forsaken me, my life is over."
Naomi had placed her hope in her circumstances and therefore she felt abandoned by God, hopeless. But God was moving in His own way and in His own time, and His plan made Naomi’s grandson the great-grandfather of David. Naomi’s small hopes of shelter and a decent life were so small in comparison to the reality of what God blessed her with.
The Czech playwright Vaclav Havel wrote, “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.” Our hope in Christ is an absolute certainty: a certainty for today and tomorrow. And knowing that our God has plans for us that are only good, we can be certain that the circumstances in our lives make sense, regardless of the outcome or the circumstances we find ourselves in.
Because our hope is in Jesus Christ, we have the assurance of eternal life. And that life is not something deferred until our lives on earth end. Eternal life begins at the moment of salvation, living in the fullness of Christ in the here and now. That hope should shine out of us like a beacon, lighting up the world around us and throwing such a beacon of light on the truth of Scripture that those who are blind will be able to see it and claim it for themselves.
In this advent season and in all seasons, my prayer and my hope is that our beacons continue to burn so bright that the world will see the immensity of the glorious way of the life Christ has in store for all who follow Him.
Father, I pray that my hope will never rest on the shaky ground of the things of this world. Help me to know and understand the amazing hope that only comes from You. And let that hope shine from me and light up the world around all those I encounter..
"Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And because God raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory, your faith and hope can be placed confidently in God." ! Peter 1:21 (NLT)
