Here's to Hoping....

Job 6:8  Oh, that I might have my request, that God would grant what I hope for.

It’s December.

Thanksgiving is past, but for me it’s the simplest of holidays. Just gratitude. Being thankful. Remembering and retelling God’s Faithfulness. I remember easily. I recount willingly, the things that have already happened. The way He has already provided. It’s a reflection on what has been.

Christmas has always been more difficult for me. It holds more expectations, more demands…some expressed by others, others placed upon myself. I observe people checking off their lists. Rolling out traditions like they have waited all year for this.  Completing their Christmas shopping as if the possibility of not having funds to buy gifts has never crossed their minds.

It’s the first week of December and part of me says I should be busier. My schedule and to-do list have not changed. We are in a season of waiting. We are anticipating. We are hoping. We are expecting. It’s our reality. It’s where He wants us right now…asking and believing for daily bread. Then thanking for the manna.

Our present reality is a gift.

Living in hope.

def. noun. A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.

We hear often of Christmas hope. It’s a season of anticipating. A celebration of our eternal hope, Jesus, coming to us in the form of a baby. Our Emmanuel. God with us. His coming was prophesied long before the promise was fulfilled. Saints of old knew the promise, they rehearsed it, but still they waited. 

The fulfillment of a hope is a beautiful thing. Proverbs 13:12 “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” An answer to a prayer, a desire, increases our faith…it’s a life giver.

But the process of being required to continue in hope gives life as well.  When we hope for something it’s because something is not yet complete. Something is missing. Something is still needed. Something is unfinished.

Humanly speaking it would be nice to have no need for hope. But there is an intense beauty in the lacking. A dependence in the needing.

God sufficiency replaces self sufficiency.

Gratitude for the mundane replaces an entitlement of the extras.

A desperate hope for divine intervention is a painful, yet beautiful, thing.

Maybe one day, we will again be able to celebrate December with glitz and dazzle. Experiencing the joy of gift giving extravagantly.

Don’t misunderstand…we will still celebrate December. We will celebrate hoping. We will celebrate waiting. We will celebrate dependence.

We have been given a gift already.

Our hope has come. God is with us. God is for us. EMMANUEL.