Reigniting Hope at Christmas

by Rev Robert A Wendel

Christmas is coming again!  It’s time for greetings, gifts and glad times.  Christmas is one of those times when our hope is reignited because our heavenly Father sent his Son to earth to offer believers the ‘certain hope’ of a future life in eternity.

Hope, here and now, energizes us for the many conflicts and setbacks which we encounter along earth’s many pathways around us and within us.  Christmas hope is not simply wishful thinking.  The hope we acknowledge during Advent is found only in Christ, grounded in the reality that Jesus came in weakness and meekness and will come again in glory to redeem the world.

So, during this happy season, you and I should have confidence in God’s future.  This Christmas, all of us look forward to remembering the past through the power of memory and the rekindling of the spiritual lights that lead us back to the Bethlehem story of a babe in a manger.

Many of the young Christian fellowships which received letters from Paul lived in fear and collective anxiety.  Yet, they speculated about the day when the Lord would return again and set things right.

Today, like them, we are able to bear the present darkness because, we believe in the coming dawn, a dawn in which doubt and shadows give way to abiding contentment because ‘God is with us’, day and night, giving us more love than our hearts can hold.

We do not live by experience alone but by experience tempered with great expectation.  This is the purpose of Christian hope, to help us contend with this ‘humbug world.’  We have some idea of where we are because we have some idea of where we’re going.  Glory to God ‘for us unspeakable gift’, Jesus!

This month’s ABC Men’s breakfast, as always, will feature great food and fellowship on Saturday, December 13th at 8:00 a.m.   Rev. Frank Miller from Parchment Valley will offer our devotion.    See you guys there!!