A Better Hope

“But we had hoped that He was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened.”

Have you ever really wanted something, you know really wanted it and you just hoped beyond hope that it would happen or that you would get it?  Now, have you ever really hoped for something and instead of getting what you really wanted God gave you something else? And, have you ever really hoped for something and God gave you something else and it was better than you could have ever imagined or hoped for?

One of the funny things about hope is that we tend to hope for the “possible” and often disregard the impossible.  But our God is a God of the impossible and we often find ourselves hoping for things that are too small.  In Luke, the Jews were hoping for a ruler to come and conquer the evil Roman empire.  They were looking for a man to overthrow the government and restore peace, but God had a much bigger plan.  His plan was not to conquer Rome, but to conquer sin and death and rule His entire kingdom.  Just as the Israelites were short sighted in their hopes we can be the same way.

We hope that God will heal the sick, give us the resources we need to survive, change the weather, and even end this pandemic.  Don’t get me wrong, God can (and might) absolutely do all those things, but are we missing out on a better hope?  Our hope should be that His will be done no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in.  If we shift our hope to better things, the little things that we hope for (and are anxious over) will fade away as God’s perfect plan is unveiled to us piece by piece in God’s perfect timing.

Meditate on this verse today, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17).