If a “hope circle” defines the extent to which you have faith, then how big is your hope circle?
To review from Hebrews 11:1 (my last post), faith comprises the stuff (the “substance”) of what we hope for. If hope is a circle that spreads out from where you are, then the diameter of that circle is limited only by the amount of faith you have.
Faith is the substance. There’s “stuff” to it. It is the substance of the things for which we hope, like our dreams for example. Why is it so hard to “wrap your brain around” the notion that faith is something we can grasp and comprehend? To say that we have not faith or you may not have faith misses the point entirely. We each and everyone have it. It just depends in what we place our faith.
You have demonstrated this to yourself many times. Don’t be surprised by this. For example, you and I have boarded airplanes and may have looked into the cockpit to check out the pilot. I could know him. I may have flown with him when I served in the Air Force. Still I walk back to seat 14E and sit down and fasten my seatbelt and expect to go relatively quickly from point “A” to destination “B”. And when I sit down in 14E, I have faith that it will hold me up and when I plop down, I won’t be injured.
For what do you hope? Presents around a decorated tree? A reunion of family to join with you? A home filled with Christmas music? Enjoying a mug of egg nog while seated in a corner chair?
For so, so many at Christmas, the limits of their hope bring their “hope circles” way too close to them—so close, in fact, that it’s entirely too easy for them to see beyond their hope circles into a vast area of “hopelessness.” They hope for heat in their house, or Mom AND Dad seated around the table, or food that’s warmed, or clean water. So many struggle at Christmas because it’s too easy to see the limits of their hope and are, in fact, choking on their hope circles.
As I described this concept to my class of adult undergraduates one evening, one of my students, an African-American, approached me after class. He told me that he was from inner-city of a major east coast metropolitan area and in that community, poverty and despair were so pervasive that there wasn’t any way that people he knew who lived there could hope or dream. He wondered if I had any response for them.
I told him that there wasn’t any way that I would be able to know his experience. I told him that I couldn’t imagine his experience and that there was nothing I could tell him about that circumstance because I couldn’t know it personally.
But then I told him that there was someone who did know what that was all about. God had experienced that reality through His son Jesus Christ. God knew poverty. God knew despair. God knew what that was all about.
For what do I hope at Christmas? I hope for you to find my faith, the faith of your fathers and know God’s reality in your life. Faith expands the limits of our hope. Faith warms our hearts, if not our homes or food. Faith fills our homes with music, if coming only from ourselves. Faith promises springs of living water welling up inside you. Faith brings people together in the family of God.
Especially at Christmas, having faith in God means there are potentially no limits on the hope that we have. So much better than presents around a decorated tree, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ to liberate us from hopelessness.
Do not turn away from Him and this gift God has given us. To do so places limits on your hope. Do not wander far from the house of your liberator. Find other Christ-followers and join with them in the house of God this Christmastime. Discover your faith that you know is truly there and, as a result, the limitless hope God has for you through His son Jesus Christ.