December 2, 2021

Therefore, with alert sober minds, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.

                                                                           1 Peter 1:13

Hope is a positive word.  But what does it mean, really?  Hope has different meanings depending on our need and capacity.  Sometimes when in dark situations with no capacity to change our circumstances, hope means wishful thinking.  This is an alternative to despair.  Job experienced this, and we experience it with him.

Hope sometimes is gathered but we try to store it, much like those saving the manna in the wilderness which turned wormy in the morning.  Hope, in this case, is more magical thinking functioning much like superstition.  It is hope, but it is yesterday’s hope.  It is not renewable.

There is another hope.  This hope includes the first two types and then stretches further.  This is Hope as Grace.  This hope is experience as assurance.  It includes but also sees beyond wishful thinking, and magical thinking.  Like Job, we may not see it, but it is still there.  Imagine the experience of Zachariah, John the baptizer’s father.  Silenced when he did not believe God.  His disbelief was not bigger than Grace.  When the time came to name his son John, the formerly silenced Zachariah said, “No, his name is John.”  Remember Simeon, the prophet who blessed Jesus 8 days after birth.  His hope was he would not die before seeing the Messiah.  Imagine that moment when he looked upon the promise of God with his own eyes.  We are sometimes granted that vision, that quiet reassurance God’s grace will do what it has already planned.  

Prayer: Thank you, most Gracious God.   You plant hope in us.  Hope in your promise, hope in your guiding love, hope in your commitment.  Help us to be as committed to these things as you have been to us.  Help us watch that hope lead us to change that sees your plans come to fruition, and thank you for letting us in on the preview.  Amen.

Jeffrey Hosick is a veteran firefighter, a fire department chaplain, a psychotherapist and a pastor.  He is currently serving in an interim ministry in Dartmouth.