Hope – 2018

A very happy 2018! The first day of a new year, with all of its possibilities, has begun!

A big “Thank you” for following my Blog over the past year. The internet truly is an amazing medium – we have seen visitors from South America to China and everywhere in between during the course of 2017.

For me the turning to another year speaks strongly of the passage of time – and reminds me that we inhabit the sphere of time and space for only a brief moment. I suppose as we get older we realise with Job of old that our days are “Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle”. Some today will also add with Job – “And are spent without hope.” [Job 7:6] For sure we live in a world that is short on “Hope” as we enter the very fragile world of 2018.

For some of us 2017 was a very difficult year – a year of hurt and disappointment, loss, sorrow and pain as well as perceived failure. The danger in all of these is that we make them a permanent dwelling rather than seeing them as temporary. The wise Sage reminds us that “For everything there is a season .. ” [Ecclesiastes 3]. Yes – there is a time of weeping, a time of sorrow, a time of hopelessness – but there are also times of joy, times of laughter and a time to hope.

There must come a time – and what better time than at the beginning of a new year – that we leave behind the failure, pain, regret and sorrow of the past and begin, with a fresh hope, to move forward once again.

Ultimately, for the Christian, our hope is rooted and founded in one place, or rather one person,  from whom all other hopes and aspirations flow – Jesus Christ. It is because, in the final analysis, He is in charge, He is in control and the fact that He will have the final victory, that we can have hope in 2018.

Before Christmas we looked for several days at he the concept of “God’s House”. Let me leave you this morning with one final aspect of “The House” – with the prayer that we will able to appropriate it for ourselves in 2018.

“But Christ, as the Son, is in charge of God’s entire house. And we are God’s house, if we keep our courage and remain confident in our hope in Christ.

Hebrews 3:6