Hope

Today is the first day of Advent.  For four weeks we will prepare for Jesus’s birthday.  It is easy to prepare the house, buy the presents, and do the baking.  It is much harder to prepare my heart so that I truly understand the significance of what we will celebrate at the end of the month.

As I opened our Advent devotional tonight to read and pray with John, I was reminded that this first week of Advent is centered around Hope – the very thing that my life has been centered around for the past six months.

For several months Hope is all that I have had to hold onto.  Without it there would have been no reason to get up every morning.  To lay down my Hope would have been to give up my life.

However, God continued to remind me daily of the Hope I had in Him.  I had Hope that he would provide for my daily needs and my temporal needs by giving me my husband’s life.  I had Hope that my mom was with Him in Heaven and that I would spend eternity with her.

That led to my Hope that is beyond this earth – Hope that all of the injustice, sadness, and oppression that I witness each day will one day be no more.  Hope that Jesus will return to save me – us – from the grip that death of life has on this world.

Tonight John and I read the following words from Jesus, and He reminded us once again of our Hope in Him.

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home.  If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?   When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. And you know the way to where I am going.” John 14:1-4

I meditate on my eternal life much more now than I ever have in the past.  It gives me peace.  It is my Hope.  Because after all of the heartbreak that I have experienced and will continue to experience throughout this life, to not dwell on God’s gift of Hope to me would be to give up – to deny His words – to not accept His Hope. 

This first week of Advent I thank God for His Hope through His Son, Jesus.