The Snowman and the salad...

I ate a snowman today...and since I live in Dallas, where the temperature is hovering around 70 degrees, you can probably surmise that this snowman wasn't made of...well, snow.

I had the best of intentions when I got up this morning, for eating healthy foods...like the salad I'm now eating for lunch...but somewhere on the way to the salad, a snowman from Krispy Kreme crossed my path, and I ate him.

I bring up the ill-fated "Frosty" because he represents, for me, what sometimes happens to my hopes...I hope to do things, I hope things work out a certain way in my life and work and relationships...but hope doesn't always deliver, does it?

I was watching the finale episode of "The Biggest Loser" on TV last night, and one of the finalists made this statement:

"Without hope, what is there?"

It got me thinking about hope, which led to my looking up the word in the dictionary.

I love reading the definitions of words, and their background and meaning, but I was a bit disappointed in the word "hope," because the definition doesn't seem to have the emotional weight that you'd expect from such an important idea...it simply says that hope is an expression of what we want, or look forward to...something we desire.

On a surface level, I have no disagreement with the definition, but to me, hope is a substance that is so much more significant than simply describing what we want...it is a necessary thing...like air and water...as Frado said on TV last night, "Without hope, what is there?"

Scripture is full of the word hope...it's everywhere, throughout the Old and the New Testament, in the historical books, the poetry books, and the books that are focused on life instruction. This tells me that God understands about the importance of hope. It's true that I hope to eat healthy food and lose weight, but this is a fleeting kind of "hope"...more along the lines of "win some...lose some..." kind of hope. It informs our daily experience, but doesn't speak to a kind of inner weight of importance that we feel when the doctor says, for instance: "There's no more hope."

We must have hope to go on...but where do we get the hope? The Gospel reading for today talks about Mary's engagement to Joseph, and the shock of their finding out that she was pregnant...a very curious place to find hope, I'd say. But there it is...God plants hope in the womb of a young Jewish girl, and against all odds, he is still the source of our hope today.

And what is our hope? Our hope is in the certainty of God's love for us...the knowledge that his ultimate endgame is our joy and our redemption, and the Christmas season reminds us that the greatest hope of all was born in Bethlehem.

"And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified! But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ, the Lord."

And in Hebrews, known as a book that is all about faith and what it means to have faith...we read this:

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see...we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure..."

I hope the Cowboys will win on Sunday, and I hope I'll get a good deal on the contract I'm negotiating as a part of my job...and I hope I'll be able to resist the next Krispy Kreme donut...but these are not the hopes that anchor my soul in the storms of life...

We need a hope that penetrates our souls, to get us through even the most difficult of times.

Christmas is about peace, and joy, and love...and it's about hope...

The coming of Jesus was and is God's way of saying, "I'm real...I'm here, and you can put your hope in me." Because of the unchangeableness of his promise, and the greatness of his love for us, we have this hope as an anchor for our souls...firm and secure.