The Hope of Advent

I said I wouldn't post anymore until after the holidays.  Call me a liar!  I had some spare time today (which is a minor miracle in itself) and wanted to share something that's been niggling at my mind all week.  During this season of Advent, I wanted to try to distance myself from some of the commercialism and stress of the holidays.  Listen to more hymns and carols instead of "Let It Snow" for the 100th time.  Focus on Christ's incarnation specifically during my quiet time.  Try to spend quality time with the children either by decorating, shopping or reading Scripture/singing the old carols.  I ran across a devotional series that a fellow blogger wrote for Advent and she focuses on a new theme each week. This week's theme is Hope.

I'd never given much thought to how Christ was, and is, the fulfillment of my hope.  As a New Testament Christian, it seemed I didn't have much for which to hope.  Yes, there's the hope of spending eternity with Christ, I know.  But as I read this devotional, I thought of all the Old Testament believers and the years - literally thousands of years - they hoped and longed for the coming Messiah.  Through the fall, slavery, captivity, good kings and bad kings, famine and judgment, blessing and prosperity - they were always looking foward with longing for the One who would come to bring them into eternal blessing.  I wonder if they ever got discouraged during those long years of expectation.  I wonder if, like me, they ever doubted those promises because of the extended time of waiting.  If you dwell on how long and through what periods of darkness they waited and hoped for their Messiah, the songs that we sing each year - "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus" and "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" - take on new meaning.  Jesus was the very definition of their hopes and dreams.  And yet, what is so very sad is that when He finally did come, lowly and laid in a manger, they didn't even recognize Him.  He wasn't what they had been looking for all those years. He didn't meet their expectations.  We, with perfect hindsight, look back and say "How could they miss it?".

How blessed we are to live in this age where that hope of a promised Messiah has already been fulfiled. We have the completed Scripture and regardless of current political and social issues, we know how things will end.  Put away the "Jingle Bells" and "Rudolph" for a while.  Think back to a time before Santa and elves and Christmas decor.....to a time when the only thing people really had to celebrate was the fact that at some nebulous time in the future God would redeem mankind.  And then rejoice that He has come and that we are the recipients of the fulfillment of that hope. That is a true reason to celebrate!