Hope.
Interesting word.
It’s hard to pin down, actually. It connotes opportunity for the future, but it’s tinged with the uncertainty that whatever is being hoped for may or may not be fulfilled. In a way, hope begets more hope. You keep hoping because once you stop, hope disappears.
Hope, therefore, requires someone to actively seek it even if you never really attain it.
At Christmastime, the word hope appears quite a bit. The weeks of Advent include a week of Hope, to go along with Peace, Joy and Love.
Peace is relatively easy to define. Love, less so, but we all kind of know what love usually looks like. And joy is something that makes it possible for someone to endure terrible trials but not lose… hope.
That’s true even if the outcome that is hoped for is tantalizingly out of reach, whether for a short while, or possibly forever. Hope is the tonic that makes joy possible.
But at those times when hopes seem impossible to realize, it’s the very pursuit of hope that keeps you from giving up entirely and makes hope a journey; a lifelong journey.
That brings us to the subject of this season: Jesus.
The apostle Paul opens his first letter to Timothy by calling Jesus not only our Savior, but our “hope.” He doesn’t elaborate on that term, he just states it as fact.
But in Romans, Paul writes about one day leaving this life for eternity with God. In the meantime, all of creation “labors and groans” in this corrupt and futile world. But through Jesus we can expect a bright eternity and Paul says, “…we are saved in this hope.”
That’s a great statement all by itself, but it gets better. The next line states, “…but hope that is seen is not hope…”
Hope that is seen is not hope. There you have it, hope is ephemeral, it is not something you can touch or feel; but paradoxically, you can hold on to it in your soul. You can keep it as long as you want and the only one who can get rid of it is… you.
Later Paul says, “…if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.”
That makes sense. Here’s an example:
In 2004, the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years. At the time, there were plenty of people below the age of 90 or so who had hoped every year of their lives to see the Sox win it all. And when it happened, their hopes were realized.
There was much rejoicing… not only for the victory, but for the perseverance. The true believers did not give up!
And then, being rabid baseball fans, they undoubtedly hoped for another one, and another, and so on…
Those baseball fans had no control over whether their team would win a title, but they had control over their hope for that outcome. Sadly, many fans died before they saw that hope fulfilled. But… that still didn’t stop the championship hopes from coming true, nor did it extinguish their perseverance. They endured an entire life hoping for something they did not experience. But someone else did.
If it’s true for baseball, it’s true for other important things, like eternity.
The best friend Jesus had on Earth was the apostle John. When he was a very old man, he wrote these words to his fellow believers, “Beloved, we are now children of God; and it has not been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
That’s an amazing statement coming from a man who spent three years at Jesus’s side on Earth. He knew Jesus as well as any human could, but he also knew that this Jesus, whose birth we celebrate at this time of year, was born to us to live among us and save us from our sins so we could “see Him as He is.” His appearance on Earth, as an impoverished itinerant preacher is far different from His eternal heavenly, glorious and eternal state.
John understood hope. He had to. You can never possess it, but one day, you can see its rewards. It requires a dogged and persistent pursuit - perseverance.
You cannot give any quarter to doubt, you cannot forgo the race, you have to be monumentally dedicated to how the writer of Hebrews describes hope as “an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus…”
We celebrate Christmas, the advent of the Prince of Peace, Deliverer of Joy, Perfecter of Love and the Bright and Morning Star that guides us through trouble and darkness, because His light brings hope.
And you never have to let go of that.
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