Hope, My Birthright
Christmas is a little less than a week away and we are knee deep in holiday preparations. To be honest my mind has been swirling with little to no room for quiet contemplation or for thoughts deeper than the pile of Amazon boxes at my doorstep. However, one idea keeps percolating and finding its way through the clutter. It’s about hope, a word we hear a lot this time of year. Hope is a well-worn word and like an old familiar couch pillow it starts to lose its luster amidst in the shiny holiday décor.
God has been patiently teaching me some new things about hope, and I have begun to realize that hope is not at all what I once thought it to be. For years I have equated it with wishing. As a little girl I hoped Santa would bring me my favorite Strawberry Shortcake doll, or as a teen that I would get asked to the prom by the guy of my dreams. But biblical hope is not a wish at all. It is not something that if you cross your fingers and close your eyes tight enough, will come true. It is instead rooted in the fact that some things are already true. Hope is based on what God has done and the promises He is presently in the process of fulfilling. It is steady, solid, rock-hard ground. Hope is the basis of which, when we come to Christ and are born again into his family, we can see everything.
Earlier this month while I was snagging up Black Friday, and Cyber Monday purchases, it struck me that hope is kind of like a discount code. It is a fact which we can choose to apply. What a happy surprise to find that a way-too- expensive item we had our heart set on, has a discount code, which if applied changes everything. What was not possible now is! What looked like it was not for us is ours to own!
Hope has been given to us in the person of Christ and is ours for the taking. We just must choose to use it; to look at those very hard circumstances through the lens of what His Word says is true about, His character and His promises. When we do, it changes everything.
To be clear, hope doesn’t alter the circumstances, it only changes our view on them. Despair settles in when things are unfixable, when there is no one to help, when we are stuck, afraid and alone with no way out.
But, instead of loneliness and despair, in Christ we are accompanied in our pain, held and provided for, and ultimately promised that something good is in the works because He will redeem it all. Hope looks past the hard and says, God is in charge, and I am His. He is working this all out into something beautiful, and I can trust him.
This Christmas let’s peer into the manger and see our precious Lord Jesus bathed in light wriggling his tiny pink toes. He is our hope! Jesus, the God of the universe has become, Emanuel, God come near. He is now in the picture, and therefore, we will never be alone, or in a situation too big for Him to handle.
Let’s take all that we have been given and re-think and reframe our most current, pains and sore spots, in light of all He has said and done. Let’s apply hope, as wait with expectation and curiosity as for His beautiful promises to be fulfilled.
