Virtues on Fire: The Flame of Hope

This first week of Advent we light the first purple candle. This is the Prophecy candle, representing our hope for Christ’s coming and our recollection of the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah and the hope He brings to the world.

How do we cultivate hope in our daily lives so that we are not bogged down by the negativity of this world?  What does it actually mean to be hopeful? Consider this: if one has everything he could possibly want, for what does he need to hope? The chosen people of Israel struggled. They wandered. They stumbled, faltered and fell.  Just as we do.  But they had the promise of a savior, and they had hope that pulled them through some of the most difficult times and circumstances.

We all reach for something real (football team, job, an opportunity with tangible results). We want something we know and can see, something that not only inspires us to greatness and happiness, but hopefully more often than not pulls through for us, and then we believe we can count on it. The Israelites did not have a football team they could see, no unifying force they could count on in flesh and blood…but they knew they would eventually have that flesh and blood Messiah. They hoped through all the pain of their years and the struggles of their circumstances for what had been promised to them through the prophets. We are called to remember that hope, to harness it in our days  - to hope for our own walk with Christ and our Eternity with Him; to wait in hope for his coming again in Glory. We wait with anticipation for that day.

Lamentations 3:21-24: “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in Him.”
 
When I was young my grandmother gave me a reference book titled "Where to Find it in the Bible.” I flip through its pages often, especially when portions of a verse lodge in my mind and I am not sure where to find the full passage. It’s an incredible index of themes and subjects. So when I looked up Hope, and there is a full quarter-page of tiny-type references for the subject of hope, my eyes zeroed in on the citation in Romans.  It is Romans 4:18 titled “Hope against all hope.”  The verse is referencing Abraham, the “father of us all,” as it states “in hope he believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations; as he had been told, ‘So your descendants shall be.’”
The passage goes on to say that “No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he promised…”

I know many people who struggle today with God not doing what they have asked of him. If you are struggling, friends, if you are clinging to the last shreds of hope or even if you have lost hope altogether, please do not give up on God.  He will never, ever give up on you. He knows your trials and He knows your suffering, and hope can come from even that. Romans chapter 5 tells us that “suffering produces endurance; endurance produces character and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”