Jesus is our HOPE

I was walking the other day and honestly, I was begging God to show me what Christmas is all about because I'm having a hard time seeing/feeling/hearing it.

Just mere feet later I come upon this tree and a few feet later, another tree.

Now maybe it's because I'm finally in a place where I'm so desperate and broken, and willing and open to actually listen to Him that I truly saw it, I don't know. This isn't the first winter I've seen a few trees decorated in these woods, but bless the person who decorates these few sparse trees every winter because this year it allowed me to finally see/feel/hear Christmas.

There is nothing spectacular about this tree, it was in the middle of the woods and so calm and quiet. Yet in that moment everything about this tree said to celebrate. To celebrate that Jesus came to give me HOPE. Not that He'll answer every prayer and that everything will go may way. Because Lord knows the only Christmas wish I really had this year and the past 2 years was to have my Dad back.

No, it was His calm, quiet way of saying don't lose HOPE, I am here. It was His way of saying that in the midst of what seems like this glorious, celebratory season it's okay to recognize that it's so dang hard to feel celebratory and that I'm hurt and broken and battle worn. But, I can celebrate even if it needs to be in my own quiet way by a little tree in the woods. It was a glimmer of HOPE. And what's mysterious and yet completely makes sense about God is that word HOPE has been coming at me in little ways ever since.

Completely and honestly going to say 2018 has been a year of my undoing. It's been roughly 2 1/2 years since Dad was officially diagnosed with early onset dementia - frontotemporal. I would say my undoing is due in large part to this and the road continues to get harder. But motherhood has done it too. Kids growing, needs changing, my role changing, what do I do next. Jon and I continue to grow and change. Often times in really great ways. But, we've had dreams that just havent come to pass, some days with the kiddos are hard and some days I've had really hard days about Dad and I know how it impacts him and our relationship.

Some days, it's been hard to put one foot in front of the other.

I've never felt worthy to be a person who makes some bold statement of faith. I don't have some flashy story to tell, no coming to Christ moment. But, I'm learning more and more how we are all worthy, probably more so in our stories of brokenness, to try to bring His light into this world. Remember how I said that HOPE has been coming at me in little ways since coming upon that little tree? 

When Dad was first diagnosed, Jon put together a book of written copies of my Dad's sermons. He asked me not long ago if I have read it lately and I had to tell him it's just been a little too dang hard to open that book. Later that day it dawned on me that every Sunday sermon was broadcast on radio and I silently wondered if anything was left of that. I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it sooner, but I didn't say a word about it to Jon. Mostly because I felt it may be even more difficult hearing Dad's voice as it used to be. In the time between me thinking that and Christmas morning, Jon had contacted the guy who was in charge of making the broadcast happen and was able to obtain, not all, but at least 80 audio sermons of my Dad preaching and Jon gave them to me as a gift Christmas morning. Again, I had made no mention of anything about the radio broadcast to Jon. How fortunate that I have paper and audio files of my Dad. The first one I listened to Christmas night was my Dad talking about HOPE. 

Here's a little piece of what my Dad preached on Mark 1 dating back to December 7, 2008:

In that event (Jesus’ birth) rests real hope. Why? Why would there be real hope in a place like a manger? That’s what John [the Baptist] is pointing to and talking about. John knows, he gets it. But he knows he’s not it. In fact he knows that real hope is coming from way out beyond him. Beyond what he knew and what he believed. 

Something completely new is breaking into the world and in the strangest way and the strangest places. That’s what Isaiah is proclaiming and that’s where the source of our hope lies. It does not lie inside me or inside you, it does not lie inside this building. It lies in the One who is the Word, who comes from outside, who comes from God, indeed who is God. That’s who’s breaking in, that’s who’s crying out there in the manger. That cry is also the cry of the savior and of salvation

And here, my Dad stops and jokingly says something about “she could pick it up a little back there” because at that same moment he’s talking about the baby crying in a manger, a baby was crying in the back of the church in the nursery.

He continues and I can tell he’s saying it with a smile on his face. “But that’s where it is, that’s where the hope is… All we can do is thank God for what we’re given [hope isn’t about improving upon something]. Hope you see, as we hear it in the Gospel today is an attitude of being. That we are opened by grace and faith to God’s promise. And it’s the same promise Isaiah spoke of in the Old Testament and that John repeats in the New Testament. 

[The promise that] I will come to you and I will walk with you into the places of deepest and darkest despair and I will be with you. As it says at the very end of the Bible. ‘He will be our God and we will be his people.’ That is what John’s proclaiming, the coming of the living God. Jesus Christ, fully human fully divine to live among us. And by so doing to offer each of us the hope that can only come from Christ. A hope we can find nowhere else. In fact there really is no other hope because everything else that we call hope flows out of that hope. That only entered the world when Jesus Christ was born. 

That He gave me Jon who would think to reach out and get those for me so that I may have my Dad back for a brief moment to preach to me about HOPE... This is my bold statement of faith. How could I deny God is here when He gives me this? HOPE is here in the midst of all the mess.

I'm leaving 2018 with no expectations that tomorrow I'm going to feel completely changed, renewed, and knowing my purpose. Nope, I'm probably going to feel much the same tomorrow. I've never really been big on New Year's resolution's. So, I'm simply going to just keep listening, watching, feeling for HOPE.