Hope of All the Earth Thou Art Day 17

BY Alice Matagora

Natural disasters have ravaged homes and displaced families. War, genocide, and injustices have stolen countless innocent lives. Divisions in our country, even within our faith, seem impossible to bridge. Family relationships feel beyond repair. Life circumstances seem hopeless. There is the heartache, ailments, and infirmities we or our loved ones carry. Our sin and brokenness feel too heavy a burden to bear. 

We are a long way from where humanity first started in the garden of Eden, and we feel it deeply. From the world in which we are living to our very bodies and souls, nothing has escaped the impact of sin and brokenness. 

If you’re like me, some days the best you can do is cling to a thread of hope in God’s promise to make all things new. I wonder if the Jewish people felt the same way around the time of Jesus’ birth. 

Given the centuries-old promise of a good and victorious King and an everlasting kingdom, did they question God’s faithfulness as they endured under Roman rule? They were the ones God had trusted to represent the people to God, but they had abused their power and taken advantage of the vulnerable—the sick, the lowly, the marginalized, the sinful who lived cast out from society. 

Did they grow weary in waiting for Christ their Savior to come?

I’m sure many did. Yet those who remembered God’s faithfulness to His people in the past were able to endure to the very end, even when all hope seemed lost—especially then. 

When my eyes are fixed on the brokenness of the world around me, I am prone to despair. It all seems too broken to fix, too far beyond hope. But when I am able to pull my eyes off the mess and lift them to God, I am reminded that even if all else fails, He has and will always be faithful to fulfill His promises. It is who He is. He can’t be any different.  

This Advent season, we celebrate and remember God’s demonstration of faithfulness to His people—that while we were still sinners, God sent His Son to earth as a baby, to live a holy life, to die a criminal’s death, and to defeat death once for all, that whoever believes in Him shall be saved (Romans 5:8,10:9). 

May our reflections this Christmas season give us renewed hope that He who has been faithful to His promises in the past will be faithful to His promise to bring the new heavens and new earth, where righteousness reigns and sin and brokenness will be no more. And may we experience the nearness of God’s presence until He does.