Just started reading through the “Behold the Lamb of God” devotional book by Russ Ramsey. The book is 25 devotionals about the coming of Jesus. I have read through these before and just wanted to do it again this year. What struck me today was this small little phrase…
“…they couldn’t bring themselves to live as though this promise was real.”
What promise?
Well, you have probably guessed it…
It’s the promise of the coming Messiah that he would come one day and make everything new.
They lived in a very broken world. A world of pain, brokenness and struggle. A world that wasn’t perfect and didn’t seem to be even close to getting there. A world that was ran by political people who didn’t seem to really know what they were doing or were just doing things to enhance their own political power and their personal needs rather than helping the people with their’s. A world where fatal sickness was a real possibility. A world where fear and danger could come at any moment. A world where there was little mercy and where love had been deformed into something less wholesome. It made one feel weary and worn. Thus the environment they lived in begged the questions…
Where is the Hope?
Where is the Peace?
Is this tale of the coming Messiah just a myth or is it real?
The idea that He was coming to make everything right seemed to be an impossibility and the more desperate their circumstances became the more their desperation grew and the more their desperation grew the more desperate they became for a change. A change that would free them, a change that would make the evil go away and make all things new as it should be…
And because of their desperation they couldn’t bring themselves to live as though the promise of the coming Messiah was a real possibility.
You may be one of those people…
The kind that says, I just can’t believe in that story. The story of a future where Jesus makes everything right and gets rid of all the evil. It seems impossible…
and you are right…
it is impossible…
but He is the God that makes the impossible – possible by a mere speaking of a word.
But that sounds ludicrous…
yep it does…
but that doesn’t make it less true.
Do not allow desperation to weaken your faith in someone bigger than you. Do not allow desperation to make you doubt God’s existence and involvement in things. Instead allow your desperation to reach out to someone bigger than you that can do things you can’t accomplish. Let your desperation be the road to faith in that God who has already come one time and has promised to come again…
to make all things new!