Advent 2024 - Hope

Devotion for the week...

It's the first week of Advent! As I type this, our house is a disaster with Christmas stuff in boxes and plastic totes all over the place. The tree is up and the lights are on it, but that's as far as I've gotten so far. Despite the mess, I love this process of getting the house ready for Christmas.

I also love the process of writing Advent devotions to get our hearts ready for Christmas. Jesus came to earth to bring us hope, peace, joy, and love, so we're going to focus on those four things this month. Today we begin with hope.

We listen to a radio station called The Joy FM, broadcast out of Florida. We've been listening to them for years, so we're very familiar with the on air personalities, and one of the ways they describe themselves is by saying they're 'real people, living real life along with you.' One morning a few weeks ago, that was very obvious. The morning crew, Dave, Bill, and Carmen, are usually very upbeat and funny, but as soon as I heard their voices this particular morning I knew something was wrong. Carmen sounded like she was barely holding back tears, and they were all very solemn. Turns out they had suddenly lost a friend the night before, someone who worked at a sister station and who had once worked with them at The Joy FM. You could tell they were reeling from the news, processing their grief even as they talked about their friend's faith and his love for Jesus.

The next week, the first morning they were back on the air after their trip for his funeral, they talked about how surprised they were by the first song played at the funeral. Glorious Day is such an upbeat song, it took them by surprise when it first started to play. Then they realized what a perfect song it is for a funeral because of the chorus, which says, "You called my name, and I ran out of that grave." It's a celebration of the incredible hope we have in Jesus.

Jesus was born as the baby we celebrate at Christmas so that He could become the sacrifice we remember on Good Friday, and the resurrected Savior we celebrate on Easter Sunday. Not only that, but because He died and rose again, we have the assurance that we won't stay in our graves, either.

"But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died.

So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man. Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life. But there is an order to this resurrection: Christ was raised as the first of the harvest; then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back" (1 Corinthians 15:20-23).

Unless Jesus returns first, the grave will someday claim us all. Thankfully, that's not the end of the story. For us and for all those who believe in Jesus, we have this hope: "And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died" (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14).