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The Advent of Hope

“Hope is on the way” was the biggest pile of manure that any politician could say.  This is because politicians and government cannot bring hope, direct people to hope or even explain hope to the masses.  A good way to think of hope is to think of it as a favorable view of the future.  Someone who has hope has a positive outlook on the future, while the hopeless have a negative outlook on the future.  So when politicians promote hope, people gobble it up because they have not been hopeful for a very long time.  People lose all hope when the political landscape promises the moon and never delivers anything.  Trust is eroded and hope is lost.

When people promise hope, they will always fail.  This is because people, governments, institutions and systems cannot predict the future or even control the future.  Therefore they cannot plan for the outcome of things.  God is the only one who can promise hope and make sure that promise is never broken.

Jesus was born into an oppressive, capricious world.  Rome had become a dictatorship when Julius cross the Rubicon in 49 BC.  Rome moved from a senatorial republic to an empire with one man deciding the fate of millions of people.  No one could challenge him (although the senators killed Julius.) and the whims of the emperor were law.

So when Augustus wanted more money, he decided to tax the entire world.  People had to go to their ancestral home to register and pay.  This ruined the lives of thousands of people who lost families and business and everything they owned to make the trip and pay the tax.  This world-wide tax removed all hope from everyone except the high ranking friends of Caesar in Rome.  Joseph and very pregnant Mary had to travel by donkey to Bethlehem.  When they got there all the rooms were full so Jesus was born in a stable.  Everything the prophets predicted came to pass.  Everything must have seemed hopeless to the poor couple.  Then hope incarnate was born.  People could now believe in something bigger than a political party, something more stable than the Roman government, more important than anything on earth.  God incarnate, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the hope of nations was born.

Today there are situations all over the world where hope has been lost.  North Korea, Syria, Indonesia and Afghanistan, for example, are countries where hopeless people live.  In America, everything has been reduce to politics which can never produce hope.  Politics changes like the waves of the sea and there is no hope in that.  So, even today, the message of hope is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It is a gospel of hope.  With Christ and only with Christ the future looks amazing and wonderful.  Hope is on the way, indeed, only with Christ.

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