What is Christian Hope?

Isaiah 9:2:
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.

This season between Christmas and Ash Wednesday is called Epiphany. It is the season when we celebrate the hope we have in Jesus Christ. The symbol for this season has traditionally been light in the darkness. To me this seems like such a great symbol right now, when the arctic coast of Alaska is just about ready to see the first appearance of the sun in the year. Just as the sun can be counted on to appear at the right time, we can also expect Jesus to be with us always as our hope, and to act at just the right time.

Hope is about living today for the kind of future God wills for all creatures. That being said, I wonder sometimes about the difference between hopeless living, living with false hope and living out of real hope. Here are a few of my beginning thoughts:

• Some people seem to live as if they have no options at all, with no real expectation that God will bring about a future worth living for. Such people, it seems to me, live without hope—without any sense that Christ is already with them or faithfully at work for the future.

• Some people seem to live as if Christ were a fairy godmother who would wave a magic wand and fix everything. By this I mean, some people seem to live as if they, themselves had no responsibility to live in such a way as to help facilitate the tomorrow (or next year, or next decade, or next century) that God is bringing about. They live as if they didn’t have a care in the world, because God will fix everything. Such people offer nothing today for people lost in the darkness. Their sugar-coated words fall empty on people suffering today.

• But there are some people who seem to really know about hope. They look at the world as it really is, neither giving up on it nor sugar-coating it. They know that sin and brokenness are real, and they join with those suffering today. They look for what God is doing today to make a difference, because they know that God is in the world today and that there really is light leading toward a better future. And they know that God calls them to be a part of all God is doing to bring that future to life. Such people take action in their own lives—often costly action. And because they take action, they both build up the whole people and become part of what God is doing to help the whole world become move toward a better future.

I hope you will want to be one of these hope-full people, one of those looking for the Light of the World in each day, and whose life helps point the world toward that light.

Hope is to hear God's melody for the future;
Prayer is to listen for it;
Faith is to dance it. --adapted from a quote by Ruben Alves