Simply put, hope is the expectation of something good.
This time of year we celebrate “Advent” which means arrival. The arrival that people of the Christian faith celebrate is the arrival of Jesus into our reality.
In my last post, I made it clear I am struggling with hope this holiday season. Are you? Some of that, for me, is that I am looking for a job in a job market that is a tough one. Maybe you can relate. If you send out over a hundred resumes and fill out around that many applications and send them into the great beyond, and you land about five or six face-to-face interviews with not much to show for it, it can jar your Christmas joy!
Another layer of it for me is uncertainty. I’m not a huge fan of uncertainty. Yet, it seems like most of my life is spent there. We’ve become besties over time. Based on the above conversation, I have uncertainty in my professional future but I also have uncertainty in a bunch of different categories in my life right now. At the ripe age of fifty-two, you’d think I would have a bunch of things figured out but I have found the older that I get, the less certainty I have.
Then there are everyday struggles and then there are struggles that are ripple effects from the above challenges, that make hope and joy an uphill battle for me.
Here’s the truth:
It is hard to expect something good when going through something bad.
I think we all want hope, we enjoy the feeling and security that it brings, but we are afraid to hope for fear of being let down. The fear is that we cannot afford to lose any more hope.
One of the things I have to keep reminding myself of is this, the Christmas story is riddled with reasons to give up hope. Let’s take the birth announcement as an example.
There are shepherds in a field during the night. Don’t miss that detail. Shepherds weren’t super popular people among the religious elite. As some commentators have said, many were thought to have “confused mine with thine”. In other words, some people thought they were thieves.
They also spent a lot of time around sheep. So many things to be said here but the main one is this: they were considered unclean because of it. This excluded them from worship and from a bunch of social circles.
Lastly these shepherds are in a field at night. In my last post, we talked about the play between light and darkness in Scripture a little but it is not accidental that Luke mentions it here. In this deep darkness, a message of hope is delivered.
That message is so bright, that the shepherds fall down because they are in awe of the brilliance of it. So awestruck are they, that they have to be told…
“Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people…” Luke 2:10
The shepherds’ eyes had adjusted to the darkness, so much so that when they encountered a bright light it caused terror.
They were encouraged to not be afraid. I would encourage you to do the same. Don’t be afraid to hope again. I know, you are afraid of being let down. Your eyes have adjusted to the darkness. Mine have too.
But what if our hope wasn’t in the results of what was happening around us? What if we, like the shepherds, could be encouraged to put our hope in a person and not our circumstances?
When we look at the life of Jesus, we see Him suffer greatly. We also see him rise above the suffering and dare to hope (Heb 12:2). Jesus suffers and dies but His life is so powerful that death cannot stop Him. That is what we hope in. That is what we are awestruck by!
I know that isn’t a “Christmas” message, I’ve treaded into Easter territory here but that is the hope we have; that even in suffering, we can carry hope with us because Jesus is a “living hope”. (1 Peter 1:3) One that even suffering cannot snuff out. (Matthew 12:20-21).
To be a person of hope, we cannot let our circumstances dictate our condition.
We must hope despite our circumstances. Because our hope is in a person that did not let suffering, shame, or even death snuff out His light.
Jesus gives us hope in this life and the next. We have hope in the resurrection but we also have hope because we can see His light in other people.
“We have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” Romans 5:1-5
Did you catch that? Because of the love poured out into our lives via the Holy Spirit, we can talk about how much we are suffering. Why?
Because our hope is greater than our suffering.
Our hope is in a person, that person is Jesus. Our hope can be ignited by other people. How?
When people who have hope in Jesus, live out His love it produces good character. That good character gives other people, and us, hope.
We can expect good things because we can see the good that is produced in other people despite their suffering.
I want to encourage you to practice hope this Christmas. One way to do that is to be in awe of the good news about Jesus and to be a person that loves despite the suffering you are going through. That love will produce hope in you.
I know it is tough but it is good. Not only that, but it is proof that good exists.
Try it and see the light in the darkness. You will find hope.
Hope, peace, joy, and love to you my friends.
Matt
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