Isaiah 40:1-5
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’
If you've been listening to the news or reading the newspaper over the last year or so you know that we are living in hard times. No matter how you may define hard times or how others define hard times it would appear as though our reality for the foreseeable year we will be living through hard times.
With hard times come the unholy twins of fear and worry. If you're just starting out you worry about job prospects, if you have a job you worry about losing your job, if you've lost your job you worry about finding a new job, if your retired you fear losing your retirement. If you're not worried or fearful right around now there is something wrong with you is the message we are bombarded with on the news and in the news outlets.
The people of Israel knew a thing or two about hard times. Time and time again they found themselves in one hopeless situation or another. From the exile in Egypt to the crushing defeat by the Babylonians hard times was an ongoing reality in the lives of God's chosen people. But yet they never lost hope in the God who was their savior (well actually they did a few times but that didn't last too long thankfully).
The people of Israel knew that in their hard times that hope was not lost. They lived in hope that even if they themselves did not see the end of their hard times that their children and their children's children would see a new day.
Do we share that same hope?
As we turn our gaze towards Christmas we seek to capture some of that hope that the people of Israel sought in the midst of hard times. But are we filled with the same hope and trust in God that better things will come?
There is a reason why God chose to come to us in the form of a child rather than with trumpets and great glory. God chose to come as a child because in a child we see "the hopes and fears of all the years." We see possibility in a helpless child, we see hope. In Jesus our hope is made flesh. But our challenge as we live through these hard times is to place our hope in the One who call us to do more for others than for ourselves. Our hope is to be in the God who sees us through hard times. Our hope cannot be in ourselves or our things but in our good and gracious God.
May you find true hope in the midst of hard times.
