Hope

Advent is a time of reflection as we prepare our hearts in the weeks leading up to the celebration of Christ’s birth.  As the first week of advent focuses on hope, we reflect on the hope that Jesus’s life and light bring as John 1:4 says: “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”  

As Jesus brought hope and light into a dark world, we can carry this hope into situations in our individual lives as well.  When we have hope, we have “an expectation of a better future because of what God promises to us in His Word”.  But what do we do if somewhere along our journey we lost hope and are discouraged in an area of our lives? Proverbs 13:12 says “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”

Joseph, the son of Jacob in Genesis 39-41, had many opportunities to lose hope and be discouraged as he spent his young adult years in a prison in Egypt.   However, he remained hopeful in a hopeless situation, and not only were God’s purposes and plans fulfilled for his life, but this hope positioned him to be used by God to preserve the nation of Israel during the years of great famine.

It was the series of dreams that Joseph shared with his brothers where he was reigning over them that caused him to be sold into slavery and it was interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams years later that got him out.  If he allowed his heart to “get sick” because hope was deferred in between these two events, he wouldn’t have gotten through to the other side of the trial and become a ruler over all the land.

No matter what you are facing right now, stand in the hope and dreams that God breathed into your heart because no matter how discouraging it may look, things can change in an instant just as it did for Joseph when he was summoned out of the prison pit and moments later was standing in the presence of the king (Genesis 41:14).