Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
- Hebrews 11:1 (NIV)
We all know what it feels like to get our hopes up. You’re doing all you can to fix the relationship. You’re working extra hours, going above and beyond expectations. You’re doing everything the doctors tell you to do.
And we all know what it feels like to get our hopes crushed. They still leave. Someone else gets the promotion. The treatment didn’t work.
And we wish we’d never hoped at all.
Why? Because hope can be a dangerous thing. There is always pain in loss, but when hope comes first, the pain cuts deeper. Why? Because we dared to believe something better was possible.
That’s how God’s people felt for hundreds of years—waiting for the promised King who would save them from their mess. As the author of Hebrews writes, they were confident in their hope of a promised Messiah, even though he hadn’t come. They had faith and did not abandon hope.
So they waited. And waited. And waited.
Over the centuries, that faith began to dwindle. Everyone was hoping God would act, but he just seemed to be absent. Some tenaciously clung to hope in God’s promise. Some, tired of waiting, clung to other things.
Maybe we can relate to those ancient Israelites more than we think. Waiting is hard. We can be tempted to put our hope in the wrong things or abandon it altogether. That’s why hope can be so dangerous.
The good news for us is that our hope in God is never in vain. God kept his promise through the birth of Christ, confirming their hope and sparking the movement of faith that exists to this day.
This Advent season, when you’re tempted to put hope in anything other than God, ask the Holy Spirit to help you set your hope firmly upon God’s promises, which are all fulfilled in Jesus Christ (see 2 Corinthians 1:20, NIV).
