Hope is Here - A Reflection for the End of the Christmas Season

Sometimes the Christmas season is too short,

sometimes it is too long,

sometimes it feels just right.

Sometimes the Christmas season is joy-filled,

sometimes it is sorrowful,

sometimes it just is.

Sometimes the Christmas season is relaxed,

sometimes it is tense,

sometimes it is exhausting…

No matter Christmas has been for us, there is one thing that it is always. It is always about hope. Christmas is about hope, for if God would send his son as a baby, a child to lead his people then hope is the center of Christmas.

The gospels we hear proclaimed at Christmas, Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord express hope. The birth of the Christ Child and the hope the shepherds discovered. The magi searching and finding the Child and being filled with hope for all humankind. John the Baptist baptizing Christ and being assured that hope had indeed come.

Hope was born in that manger bed, so many years ago and hope is born time and time again because God cares about the big things, the small things and all things in our life.

Life is great – God cares.

Family is falling apart – God cares.

Loved ones ill – God cares.

People working together – God cares.

Neighbors looking out for each other – God cares.

A pray whispered – God cares.

God cares, because God is love and love is hope-filled and ever present. Remember Emmanuel – God with us. So through thick and thin, through bad and good, through joy and sorrow, through pain and freedom God is with us and that is hope in action.

God cares so much and offers us the gift of hope as his beloved son, would grow up and live and radiate hope and even when others tried to destroy that hope by killing him upon a tree, it would not die. No hope would live again and offer us life eternal. All because a child was born, hope was born, for you, for me, for all people.

 

 

As this Christmas Season draws to a close, we can’t leave the baby in the manger, we need to walk with our Saviour, and we need to walk with hope into the rest of 2014.

 

As we move into 2014 I wish to share with you words from a song that seemed to be the soundtrack for me this Christmas Season, words I seek to hear echo in my ears and journey all the year through.

Heaven and nature singing

He is our new beginning

Can you hear?

Hope is here

Joy in a baby’s birth

Heaven is flooding earth

God is here.

Hope is here!

Amen.