Season of Advent: Hope
Posted Tuesday, January 17,2012
Hope...Boy, it’s a charged word today! Recently there was a movement using this word “Hope” as part of its theme. Subsequent discussions and debates, even jibes, have made it clear that there were as many definitions for this word as there were people. Each defined what hope meant and waited to see how their expectation was either met or un-met. Some believed this hope aligned with their desires and are still holding out hope, while others felt hopeless because their hope varied greatly from what the ‘other side’ defined as hope.
It’s a funny word—HOPE; it’s a little like the word “peace” that I wrote about a few years ago. I believe it’s all in how I define it and that comes from who or what my hope is based in. I wonder if hope, like peace, is without a biblical definition, even among believers?
Growing up, our pastor talked about hope. He felt the world at large would define it as a: “hope so, think so, maybe so, could be so, kind of hope...” It’s the hope one has as a lottery ticket is bought. Or the kind that a boy experiences as he asks out a girl for a date, unsure yet wishing that she would say ‘yes’. It could be hope that buoys the emotions of a nation as video feed comes from 1000’s of feet down in a Chilean mine. Perhaps it’s the dogged belief that God grades on a curve. Maybe the feeling that arises as the car topped by revolving blue lights passes by and tickets the Mercedes you have drafted behind for the last 37 miles. Or even the hope that those looking for the Messiah held: believing He had come to release them from their oppressors and set them up as rightful heirs in a powerful earthly kingdom. Maybe it’s the kind of sentiment that is voiced in a full sanctuary when someone says: “I trust that we are all believers here.”
These expectations of hope sound hollow, like hope is based on some sort of divine luck. Jesus came to bring us hope not better odds! My pastor clarified that the hope that Christ offers us is NOT “a hope so, think so, maybe so, could be so, kind of hope” BUT “a KNOW-SO kind of hope” based on the promise and power of our Heavenly Father and the work of His Son, Jesus Christ. It’s a hope that can absolutely be counted on. It takes faith to believe it and it is questioned at times; it’s based not on luck or probability BUT in the One who is offering it to us.
It’s almost impossible for me at Christmas to think about the birth of the Christ-child, without seeing Him 30 some-odd years later as the same Savior who died for us then rose again. He offers us forgiveness and righteousness, so that the hope of eternal life with Christ is ours as well as the mind boggling surety of being fellow heirs of the kingdom alongside Christ!
I doubt this kind of hope at times; the Thessalonians did in the first century as well. Paul reminds them amidst the trials, doubt and conflicting teaching: “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so,through Jesus, God will bring with him) those who have fallen asleep… we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.” (I Thessalonians 4:13-18)
Don’t fall for the world’s wishful thinking: “a hope so, think so, may be so, could be so, kind of hope.” Believers have been given “KNOW-SO kind of hope.”
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