We are not even halfway through Advent! Will Christmas ever arrive? I “HOPE” so!
When you were a child, did you ever make construction-paper chains to count down the days until Christmas? You knew the days would eventually pass and Christmas would come, but did it seem like the days could never go by fast enough?
That is how it is with hope. It requires patience. Moses promised his people that they would enter the promised land…after forty years in the wilderness. The prophet Jeremiah promised his people that one day they would return from captivity and once again live in their land…after seventy years in Babylon. Isaiah promised a Redeemer would come…and he did, hundreds of years after the prophet had died.
In Rom. 8:23-25, Paul wrote, “Even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children, including the new bodies he has promised us. Now that we are saved, we eagerly look forward to this freedom. For if you already have something, you don’t need to hope for it.”
Again, Paul wrote in Romans 15:4, “These things were written in the scriptures long ago to teach us. They give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God’s promises.”
If you find yourself wishing time would go by faster, that the COVID restrictions would end more quickly, that the vaccine would be offered sooner, that you could open those packages accumulating under the Christmas tree, then set aside time today to slow down. Take a walk outside: Look at our world through God’s eyes and listen to the sounds with God’s ears.
