Hope is a fuel that keeps people going. The people of God had been fuelled by God’s many promises in the Old Testament and by His acts of deliverance for them. Abraham had been fuelled by the hope of a son: the promise God had given him – ‘a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir’ (Gen 15:4) – had kept him going through many years of journeying and many challenges. Paul, when commenting on Abraham in the New Testament, says, ‘Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”’ (Rom 4:18) Abraham kept on hoping and believing, reminding us that there can be many years between God’s promises and their fulfiment. Hope is a powerful antidote to unbelief. Even if we cannot yet see what God is doing or how His promises to us can be fulfilled, hope refuses to give up.
Joseph is another Old Testament example who had to wait a long time to see the fulfilment of his dreams and the promises God made to him when he was only a teenager. He was sold into slavery by his brothers, who pretended to their father that he had been killed by wild animals. He worked for a while as a servant to Potiphar, and whatever he did, he did well and prospered, but then he was tricked by Potiphar’s wife and ended up languishing in prison. There must have been times in prison, especially when the cupbearer forgot about all the help Joseph had given him and did not remember him to Pharaoh for another two years, when Joseph could easily have given up hope altogether and felt as though God had forsaken him. In everything he did, however, Joseph showed trust in God and kept going; he served God wherever he was and worked faithfully for Potiphar, in the prison and for Pharaoh. When he finally met up with his brothers again, he could say, ‘do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you…God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. 8 “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God.’ (Gen 45:5,7-8) Hope in God was the fuel which sustained him through those years of loneliness and confusion, through the long, long years of waiting for God to vindicate him. Sometimes we too need that hope in God as we wait for Him to act, to fulfil and to complete what He has promised to us.
