Psalm 31:24
Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart, All you who hope in the Lord.
I think we can all agree that all is not right in the world these days. We might be able to put on a strong front and deny that anything is wrong. We can be positive and declare everything is good to go. But underneath all that bravado and ultra-positive thinking, lies a nudging, and annoying little voice that says to you, that it's not all that good right now. That it may appear hopeless and things will not get better.
As we enter this advent season, I want to focus on the liturgical aspect of this season. Over the next few weeks, I hope to draw a relevance and assurance through God's word, and help us all to realize that hope, peace, joy and love can and does exist, even in a fallen world such as ours.
Today, even as the world spins in orbit, God has complete sovereignty over all things. Nothing at all surprise the Lord. His eternal presence, foreknowledge and power, are incomprehensible to our puny human minds. Therefore, we have the ability to chose what we want to believe and understand. We can chose to accept the truth of God's word, His promises and His prominence in our lives, or not.
When we look closely to what is going on in the world, in one viewpoint, we can see chaos and mayhem. We can see how hopeless things are becoming. When food prices are skyrocketing out of reach of our wallets; when the government is more concerned about holding onto their own power and prestige, even in the midst of scandals and corruption; when terror is being unleashed throughout the world, including in our own backyards, it is hard to see if any hope exists at all.
But if we chose to put our faith into action, that is belief, that God is fully aware of all that takes place on earth and within in His creation, and that He has always had a plan to deal with this fallen world and the sinful heart heart of man, we can rest assure, with an unfailing hope that will overcome any fears that come our way.
God never intended man to be left alone in his sin. God always had a plan to redeem mankind and save them from His anger and wrath that sin has caused within us. He did that by bringing His hope alive in the form of Jesus Christ, by way of a virgin birth in Bethlehem, to catapult His plan into action and give the world a Savior.
This blessed assurance is the hope we can have in an otherwise, hopeless world. But let's not just resolve our hope to one season out of the entire year. The gift of grace through the birth of Christ, to the climax of His death and resurrection, is all the hope we need, in a world that appears on the surface, to be hopeless.
Your servant in Christ,
Pastor Tom
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