Devotion: Hope

This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her fiance, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.
As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:
“Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel,
which means ‘God is with us.”
When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus. Matthew 1:18-25

Have you ever been in the presence of a very educated person explaining some amazing piece of information but you just couldn’t stay engaged? That’s how humans tend to respond when we can’t empathize or relate to a person. We tend to shut down when someone is speaking down to us.

The early Jewish people also had a tough time staying engaged with God. God had come to them in floods and pillars of fire and even wrote down specifically what he expected of them onto stone tablets that he handed directly to Moses. Still, they just didn’t get it. The Jews reacted as typical human beings because they just couldn’t fully relate to a God of power.

So God did something radically different. Jesus did not come as an armored warrior to fight the forces of evil. He was not born into a family of influence and wealth. Jesus was born into a poor family. He was able to touch peoples’ hearts because he grew up among them and demonstrated how to live as fully human. Jesus’ life was all about putting God’s love and power into action. God wants us to understand that our lives here on this earth are important and we need to follow Jesus’ example of living in this world. God gave us hope for all mankind through the example of Jesus.

O Hope, aperture of God’s expansive view; prism through which all true Light breaks, illuminating paths and patterns, ways and wanderers. Refract our shortsightedness that we may look to the East with distance vision and find our Advent way. Come, O Hope, focus our blurred and distracted sight that we might see clearly the One who is coming. Amen ~Pamela C. Hawkins

This devotion is written by Denise Mainquist.

If you would like to serve as a member of the Sheridan Lutheran Writing Team and help to write devotions based on the text for the weekend, contact Amy Wagner.

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