Blog

Glimmer of Hope

December 24, 2024

Hopefulness is a powerful force in life. 

Interrogators will often hint at or offer a glimmer of hope to their subjects to get their cooperation…Hope for a deal, leniency, or even freedom.

The glimmer of hope can break through the hardest exteriors.

Mankind continues to try to find hope through political leaders or systems, education, entertainment, idols and gods made of stone and wood prayed to for health, blessings, and salvation, “miracle cures,” marriage, parenthood, friendships, and even hope in ourselves and our own willpower.

Hopelessness is just as powerful.  As a Bills fan, I speak from experience.

As we finish our Christmas celebrations and prepare to head into the New Year, many are being crushed by a sense of hopelessness while everyone around them seems to cheer and celebrate and enter 2025 with extreme enthusiasm; they struggle to find a reason, any reason, to smile.

Each year, each day, each holiday is the same. 

While the numbers and faces and event details may change, nothing ever really changes or seems to get better.

For many people; for many reasons; life becomes a long and unbearable journey toward an inevitable end.

Lying in the center of every creche this season is the hope that they so desperately need and search for.  If only they will come to Him, they will find the only true hope for their lives.

In Psalm 42:11, David, wrestling with his own soul’s hopelessness, repeats his primary soundtrack for his thoughts,

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”

Notice the phrase, “the health of my countenance.” More than once, I have been challenged that my face is showing that something is wrong.  It is often said, that our eyes are the windows to our souls.

Even if nothing is verbalized, hopelessness is often revealed through our countenance.

When we find true hope in Jesus, it shows.  It changes us inside first and then shines out for others to notice.

This hope is not based on temporal things that are always changing and often disappointing. 

True hope is found in the truth that our King, our Lord, is in control, and one day, all things will be made right.  The world will be healed, and we will be free from the hurts and heartaches that consume us now. 

We hope in that.  We hope in Him.

Before Christ, there was the promise of hope; with His birth, hope took on human form and became tangible; with His final return to redeem the earth and conquer Satan, hope will be fully realized.

If you have never placed your faith and trust in Jesus as your personal Lord and savior, you will not be able to find this hope.  It can only be found through a relationship with Him; nothing else. Read more here.

This Christmas, let’s focus our souls on the only glimmer of hope that delivers true freedom: Jesus Christ.

Merry CHRISTmas!