Hope
Read: Jeremiah 29:11-13
I alone know the plans I have for you, plans to bring you prosperity and not disaster, plans to bring about the future you hope for. Then you will call to me. You will come and pray to me, and I will answer you. You will seek me, and you will find me because you will seek me with all your heart.
Hope is the wholehearted, evidence-based conviction that God is making the future better than the past or present. But what about when all the evidence this Christmas tells you the future might only bring more pain? When forces outside of your control, like war, the economy, and sickness, cause chaos all over the world?
If you’re asking this question, you’re not alone. Around 500 years before Jesus, the Israelites fazed invasion, were captured and forcibly deported to a faraway nation. They were separated from their families, homes, and, for many, their hope. Their forced migration is called the exile, and its trauma influenced countless Scriptures. These exiles were musicians, but after their capture, they were taken as servants or slaves to work at a farm in a nation called Babylon. Their captors asked them to play the music of their people and they responded with despair, saying something like, “How could we sing songs of hope and praise to God when we’ve experienced so much pain?” Global events outside their control made hope feel impossible.
Can you relate? When things go wrong in the world it feels like evidence that God is against us, ignoring us, or has left us behind. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Throughout their time in Babylon, the people of God not only survived, but learned to thrive. They discovered God was present in their pain, and God still had a plan for their future.
Your pain is not evidence that God does not care or is far off. It is evidence that God is still working on His plan to make all things new. True hope does not ignore the pain of life. Instead, it trusts God’s plan despite the worst that life has to offer. Yes, it is a slow process.
And it is normal to get frustrated with God’s timing. But when we look at the experience of the exile, we see the evidence of God’s faithfulness in the middle of pain and in the fulfillment of His promises.
Adapted from the devotional Advent: A 25-Day Countdown to Christmas
