Good morning Hump Day Readers! The Advent season is upon us and it is one I just love. It is a time to prepare…who knows, maybe this Christmas Jesus will return in all his glory?! We prepare so we are ready to embrace Jesus whether he is “still in the manger of our nativity set” or right in front of us to take us home.

From the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word “prepare” is a verb and I love these 3 types of meaning: 1) to make ready beforehand for some purpose, use, or activity; 2) to put in a proper state of mind; and 3) to work out the details or put together a plan in advance. Each of these meanings fit right into what we do in the Advent season. And each one of these also embrace ‘hope’ – one of the main ingredients of the season of Advent which are Hope, Joy, Peace and Love.

As you prepare for Christmas this year, what are you hoping for? What are you building your hope on? Or, like many who are struggling today, are you experiencing hopelessness and thinking this Christmas may be a bit bleak?

Our preparing for Christmas should bring out joy, anticipation, and expectation. But in this broken world, we find more loneliness, hopelessness, and depression in this season. Why? Because we too easily embrace the secular Christmas than the real story of Christmas with all it’s miracles, suffering, and pain which finally culminated into the song of the angels on the night of Jesus’ birth…but that joy didn’t last real long, either…quickly they were on the run to Egypt to avoid Herod’s orders for the execution of all male children who are two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. One would have to wonder what kind of hope Mary and Joseph were grasping, but we know it was their steadfast faith in God.

I love this short story from Mother Teresa, when asked about her work that seemed so difficult it must be hopeless. She said “We have drugs for people with diseases like leprosy but these drugs do not treat the main problem, the disease of being unwanted. That’s what my sisters hope to provide. The sick and poor suffer even more from rejection than material want which leads to a deadly hopelessness and this is the most terrible poverty.”

The question remains, “what do we build our hope on?” If our hope isn’t in the Lord, then it is a counterfeit hope where people are deceived, manipulated, and decimated as they try just about everything and nothing works. Isaiah 40:31 is a great reminder of putting our hope in the Lord only: “…those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint.”

The Message Bible gives us the exuberance of the Apostle Paul’s hope in Romans 15:12-13: “Isaiah’s word said: There’s the root of our ancestor Jesse, breaking through the earth and growing tree tall, tall enough for everyone everywhere to see and take hope! Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!”

My dear friend, Pastor Steve Holm, who writes incredible devotions, wrote this a few days ago and I find his words to be so powerful, with his permission I share this below:

“One of the signs of God’s presence in our lives is
the appearance of hope in the most unlikely times.
Hope confounds us with its elusiveness. It comes and goes with
maddening irregularity and resists our most determined manipulation.”

In closing this perspective on Hope, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this is Pearl Harbor Day. Imagine the dashed hopes of our nation and the world with this deadly attack by Japan. Yet, hope still reigned and gave courage to rebuild and end some awful wars. We, too need to have courage and rebuild so I encourage us to take a step back from the scurry and hoopla of the secular world’s hold on Christmas and immerse ourselves in God’s Word where the hope we desperately need can be found on every page—from Genesis to Revelation because hopelessness reigned all those years as well. But…just at the right time…God sent his Son, Jesus, to earth to bring the Hope we needed and that Hope has never gone away. From the manger to the cross to the empty grave, all has been made new and the sins we grapple with are forgiven.

Don’t wait, grasp God’s hope again, let it filter from your head to your heart so it can flow through every artery and vein in your body, warming you from head to toe with the Hope of Christ for this Christmas and forever. Who knows—perhaps we will find ourselves in the most awesome and joyous Christmas season ever? Indeed, AMEN!