25 Days of Advent: Forged for our Hope – Day 10

I filed out of the auditorium doors shuffling with the flow of traffic. By the time I reached the cluttered parking lot, the slew of parents began to disperse across the pavement. Just a few steps ahead of my own was a mother dressed in black from head to toe, each hand clutching the extended arm of a young child.

We were walking in the same direction so I could overhear the conversation she carried on with her children. She informed them that they were headed to a wake. Unaware of what a wake even was, she continued to talk attempting to bring some clarity to her children’s curious minds.

In a simple, sad, monotone voice she explained, “Somebody died. Because that’s what we do. They were sick and now they’re not.”

Grief is one of the cruelest of emotions experienced by the human soul. Grief brings with it the feeling of loss for all hope. As though all our feelings are contained within the space of a helium balloon and somehow it has managed to slip from our fingers making its home among the clouds never to be seen again.

God understands grief. God grieves with us. And in our humanity, grief is not limited to physical death for many grieve the losses of dreams, plans, visions, and even things of personal value like a home engulfed in flames. So, in His great plan to save us from ourselves, God would send a Messiah of His own Spirit to adopt His children and make them His own once again so that grief need not steal our hope anymore.

Psalm 2:7, I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:

He said to me, “You are my son;
today I have become your father.”

A promise made that God would send His own. By the Messiah’s blood and baptism, when we submit unto His throne and are baptized by His Spirit, we are adopted into His family.

In the book of Matthew we find John the Baptist preparing the way, bringing with him a heavy call for the people to repent and be born again by a ceremonial cleansing of their soul. This symbol of righteousness is known as water baptism: the confession of needing His cleansing by the submersion of oneself into water. We we arise from the water, we are clean from our sin. John the Baptist did this by taking people into the river. It was here that Christ came to John asking him to “fulfill all righteousness” by baptizing Him as well. This is where God’s promise was fulfilled:

Matthew 3:16, As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Because of this gift we need not succumb to hopelessness, for being in His family gives us a life everlasting when our flesh, dreams, plans, and visions seem to whither away.

We are forged for our hope when we can see past the grief of today to look towards the everlasting reality of what is to come. For when we are adopted into Christ’s fold, death- of any kind- is really just the beginning.

Father, the things of life that grieve me need not be a constant companion for your promise is that I am forever in your family. My hope is found in the Messiah who has claimed me as his own. In Jesus name, amen.

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