POV Wednesday – Hope

You’ve heard the phrase, ‘Keep hope alive’?

I’d forgotten where that came from until I looked it up. Though I disagree with the source on most things, he’s not the reason I’m disagreeing with this phrase.

I’ve been thinking about it lately. And on my walk this morning, it occurred to me…

We don’t keep hope, hope keeps us.

In fact, hope literally keeps us alive.

Circumstances can be so heavy, difficult, and stressful that we can’t muster the courage or energy to lift a finger, let alone keep something so powerful as ‘hope’ alive. In those moments, I depend on hope to keep me alive.

Christmas is about hope. Hope in the form of a baby, who had just moments before been sitting on the throne of the universe surrounded by unbelievable glory and honor because He is God. But He chose to confine Himself in a human body, become one of us – that which He created – because He loved us so much He couldn’t let us live hopeless lives that only could end in death. This was the only way for hope to endure.

We hope for lots of things in this life – love and friendship, jobs and prosperity, health and amusement. But storms roll in and deprive us of those hopes. Sitting in the rain, we often find ourselves disappointed in hope.

But it’s not hope’s fault that we were disappointed! No, it was what we put our hope in that failed.

Hoping in that which is certain, although we have not yet seen it, that hope will never disappoint. It’s the hope of heaven – the path paved by Jesus, beginning with His birth that we celebrate at Christmas, and continuing in His death and resurrection we celebrate at Easter.

Without that hope, we will be disappointed, tempted to give up, depressed and shackled with life’s problems.

With that hope, we have everything – a future, a basis on which to praise God continually, promises with the backing of God for whom it is impossible to lie, a home and a family.

I pray that your Christmas is saturated with hope as you celebrate the birth of Hope.

Merry Christmas, Dry Ground friends! Thanks for sticking with me through this wintry season of life.

(photo by photobucket.com)