Hope Never Fades

Whether you have lived for one year or one hundred years, you know what it means to hope for something. When our hope is based on a promise, we remain laser focused. When the One Who makes the promise is God, our hope never fades.

As Christians we have the benefit of reading the story of God’s creation and promise to humanity as a history lesson. Everything is in the past tense. God created. Humanity sinned. He promised. Humanity sinned again while we waited for the promise. He fulfilled His promised and then promised again. Every time we thought we couldn’t wait any longer, He fulfilled His promise. That is the history lesson, but living in the present can be a bit more complicated. We call that faith.

Brethren, by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Hebrews 11.8-16

Fast forward through thousands of years and generation after generation of faithful followers who became sinners who gave up waiting. Flip through hundreds of pages of Holy Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation and the story remains the same. God promised. Humanity gave up and sinned. God came and fulfilled His promise.

Christmas is the celebration of His promise to send us a savior. We have the benefit of reading so many examples of God fulfilling His promise, it is a wonder we still give up waiting for Him. He always comes, yet we always give up.

Abraham didn’t give up and his faith was rewarded. Noah didn’t give up and his faith was rewarded. I can’t imagine our life being any more complicated than Noah waiting for a global flood, or Abraham waiting for his elderly sterile wife to have children. If they can keep the faith, so can we.

Celebrate Christmas by allowing the story of God’s fulfilled promise to help you keep your faith and hope in Him. Don’t keep the Scriptures merely as a story of the past. Keep them as inspiration for the future fulfillment of God’s promise.

The greatest New Year resolution you could make would be to not allow your hope in God to fade ‘just’ because He has delayed His promise a little while.