I was asked to participate in an Advent devotional Facebook page. Here is the devotional I submitted. Merry Christmas.
Hope is
frequently the first candle lit in the Advent season. It is the red dot on the
spiritual map to which we are drawn by faith.
Hope is the joyful expectation that the promises of God are not only
true, but that they will be fulfilled. It is a light glimmering in the
darkness, calming our fears, warming out hearts, and strengthening us to face
the long odds menacingly stacked against us. Mothers are famous for holding on
to hope.
Moses’
mother’s name was Jochebed. We don’t know much about her other than the
outside-of-the-box plan she came up with to save her son—a plan that wound up
working so well it changed the course of human history. The Pharaoh at the time
of Moses’ birth was concerned about the number and increasing power of the
Jewish immigrants in his land. Since he was the head of a strong central
government, he chose to solve his problem of immigrant proliferation by having
all the Jewish baby boys killed at birth. The mothers were told to throw their
infant sons into the river. This is not the sort of solution that would have
worked well in a modern democracy, but it was definitely in the wheelhouse of
ancient Pharaohs.
Jochebed
decided to comply with the letter of the law, if not the spirit, and “cast” her
son “into the Nile” – only her cast included a floatation device, a basket
transformed into a tiny boat. She put her son into the part of the Nile where
the Pharaoh’s daughter liked to bathe, hoping that Pharaoh’s daughter would see
the boy, like him, and keep him as her own. She positioned Miriam, his sister,
to watch the whole drama transpire. Jochebed hoped and prayed that nothing bad
would happen—and her hope was rewarded when the princess took Moses in. Miriam then ran up and asked if the princess
needed a wet nurse for the boy, and so Jochebed was brought to the palace to be
his caregiver. Everything turned out fine, and what could have been disastrous,
had the boat somehow been less than sea worthy, became a miracle story. It all
worked wonderfully.
We don’t
know whether Jochebed was moved by faith, or desperation, or inspiration, or
some combination of the above. We do know that God’s hand was on Moses and that
he was being protected and lifted up. God is the source of our hope. He
sometimes moves in our lives in such a way as to make desperate measures seem
like reasonable alternatives. One of the largest ironies of the story is that
Moses became the son of the Pharaoh who had ordered him killed.
Joseph, the
man who started the whole Jews-in-Egypt adventure, when he finally confronted
his brothers who had sold him there in the first place, says in Gen 50:20, “As
for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” This is the
dualistic dance that God has with evil in the world. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all
things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called
according to his purpose.” The enemy often cooks up a nasty circumstance, then
God moves in the lives of his people to rescue and transform it into a “good.”
This is why
our hope is in the Lord. He embraces us in our times of trouble and invites us
to join him in overcoming the world (John 16:33). He is the one who catches us
in the midst of our dark circumstance, our slavery, and winds up turning us
into Palace dwellers; into King’s kids. Romans 15:4 says, “For everything that
was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance
taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have
hope.”
Moses was
rescued and wound up talking to God in a burning bush, delivering the Children
of Israel from Egypt’s oppression. He called down plagues, walked on dry land
across the Red Sea, received the Ten Commandments, and saw God in the “cleft of
the rock”. When it was all over, God buried him.
All Bible
stories teach us that: 1) God is there. 2) He is active. 3) He will rescue us.
Look at the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Elijah,
Elisha, David, and many others. All faced desperate circumstances. All were rescued, lifted, helped, saved,
elevated and improbably secured. God saves us. He gives us hope. The
significant and difficult piece to the puzzle, though, is that our hope is in
Him, and not in ourselves. We are called to wait and trust while He works
things together for good.
A few
thousand years after the baby Moses story, another baby appears and is called
into a desperate and improbable circumstance and against long odds and overwhelming
adversity eventually becomes the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. As Jesus was approaching
the end of his journey he tells his friends, “In this world you will have
trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” In other words, “HAVE
HOPE!”
Rich Mullins
once wrote, “stories like that make a boy grow bold, stories like that make a
man walk straight.”
Psalm 43:5
says, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your
hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”
