Don’t lose hope…
My little grandson was going to a new school this week and he was so excited! I guess if he could really share his thoughts he would say, “things were looking up.” He was hoping on a fun day and a fun place. Then it happened…as he was walking into the building he fell and hit his head on the curb. Wow, what a start—an “owie”, tears, and a bump on the head. Not the way he had planned on starting out at his new school. Life doesn’t always go as we had hoped. And when it doesn’t we all react differently, and that is based on what we have placed our hope in.
Many people lose hope! Nearly 50,000 Americans committed suicide in 2022, the “highest number ever recorded in the United States,” according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which shows that the majority of suicides were men. Men who had lost hope in life and the things they had hoped in. Men who had placed their hope in something or someone and that something failed them, or deceived them, or walked out on them. In this life, we will fall and fail, we will be deceived by the promises and powers of this world, and there are times when people walk out of our life’s or just pass on. And all along we have held on to those things and people as the source of our happiness and the source of hope for our lives. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon was saying, “There is nothing on this earth that will satisfy us completely: no thing, no pleasure, or no relationship.” True hope, real hope only comes through a personal relationship with Christ.
This past Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent, we celebrated at my church by lighting a candle of hope. My prayer for my grandson is that he will someday put his trust and hope in Christ, (not this world), and that Christ would light that “candle” in his heart and that he would give him an understanding of the truth that “Christ in you” is our “hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).
By the way, because he was so excited about his new school he recovered quickly, and as he walked down the hall with his mom, this little 2 year old boy said, “I’m ok mom…”. And you and I will be ok as we begin to understand and experience the risen Lord Jesus and his transforming hope.
Don’t lose hope…hope in God.
God is our help 