Sally Welch says, ‘Hope is not always easy – it challenges us, bidding us to move out of our comfortable zone of despair, that grey sludge which covers the brightest thing with its mess of apathy and inertia.’ She goes on to say, ‘Hope encourages us to look beyond our current circumstances, to imagine a better, brighter future, and then to work towards making that vision a reality. Hope reminds us that God isn’t finished with us yet.’ (‘Sharing The Easter Story,’ P 77)

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians in Eph 1:15-19 included the request that they would know ‘the hope to which God has called you.’ God’s Spirit is able to reveal the works of God to us, enlightening the eyes of our heart so that we can see our future as children of God. In a world that has been darkened by suffering or grief, loss or pain, we need this spiritual light to give us the resolve to carry on. Thomas Aquinas wrote that while ‘faith has to do with things that are not seen’, hope has to do with ‘things that are not yet at hand.’ By faith we hold on to those things, just as Abraham held on to God’s promise, and thus faith and hope are linked in making the invisible visible and what has not yet happened a present reality!

Jeremiah 29 is probably the most well-known chapter in that book; it’s the chapter when Jeremiah writes to the exiles banished from Israel and tells them that this exile isn’t going to be over quickly, but that this difficult period of Israel’s history should not be taken to mean that God has forsaken them. In actual fact, He has good plans for them, plans to give them hope and a future, plans not to harm them but to prosper them. For the people, they are given very pragmatic instructions: to build houses, to plan marriages, to plant seeds, to pray for the prosperity of this foreign city. They are to learn to live with hope, even when pain and suffering are present.

Reinhold Niebuhr said that ‘nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime… therefore we are saved by hope.’ This reminds us that we need to take the long view and learn to live our lives with a ‘long obedience in the same direction.’ (Nietzsche) We may not necessarily see all we hope to see in our own lifetimes, but we can be sure that God’s purposes will ultimately be fulfilled. This gives hope to every situation and means we can serve God with gladness and faithfulness, leaving the final picture to Him!

In our series looking at questions, we looked at Luke 2:41-52 where the first words of Jesus are recorded in the form of two questions. The incident is one of the few aspects of Jesus’s childhood we see in the Gospels and narrates how He is found at the temple learning from the teachers and asking them questions after His parents had set off home. It’s easy to view this incident from the parental point of view and see Jesus as an arrogant twelve-year-old causing needless worry to His parents, but we know that Jesus was both fully human and fully God and was without sin…so this interpretation cannot be the correct one. In fact, we learn much about Jesus from His questions about having to be in His Father’s house and can see how this teaches us what is truly important in life.

This passage shows us the importance of faith in the upbringing of Jesus; corporate worship (travelling to Jerusalem to celebrate the Festival of Passover) was part of His childhood. The importance of parental faith is vital; children learn from seeing and doing. At twelve, he was preparing for acceptance as an adult (the ‘Bar Mitzvah‘ took place when a boy was thirteen) and we see how God is the priority for Him even at this age. Later, He would say, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.’ (John 4:34); this attitude – perhaps best exemplified in the Garden of Gethsemane – was evident even now.

We see also that growth takes time; Jesus was willing to learn and to question. He displayed a hunger and thirst to know more of God and His word, which we too must evidence if we are to grow up in God (see Eph 4:15-16). We need to see learning as a lifelong process, something which will never stop this side of eternity. He was also willing to submit to His parents and to continue in obedience to them (see Luke 2:51, Heb 5:8). This need for submission to authority is a feature of Scripture (see Eph 5:21, 1 Pet 2:13) and is often the way we grow.

Jesus is our example, our model, our guide – even as a 12 year-old boy! His hunger and thirst for God, His desire to learn, His willingness to grow, His submission to authority and His wholehearted devotion to God show us what truly matters in life.

Garry spoke this morning from Genesis 41:1, 9, 14-16, reminding us of how Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams by God’s help. Finally, after all the ups and downs of his life, Joseph stands before the most powerful man in Egypt and is given the opportunity to save his own life (and that of many others.) It must have been nerve-wracking to be summoned in this way, but in some ways, he has been prepared by God through interpreting the dreams of the cupbearer and baker. (Nothing is ever wasted in our lives!)

Preparation is a key part of God’s work in us. We rarely like this process because it seems mundane and even pointless, but it’s safe to say that it would have been much harder for Joseph to interpret Pharaoh’s dream if he had not already learned to do this beforehand. David fought the lion and the bear long before he fought Goliath (1 Sam 17:32-37). Each time we step out in faith prepares us to do so again. We often say that God does not give us more than we can handle, but the truth is that every time we feel out of our depth and unable to handle a situation, God gives us the strength to do more. This is all part of His growing, testing purpose.

Until this point, Joseph must have felt at times as though his teenage dreams would never be fulfilled. But as he has learnt patience and trust in God no matter what life throws at him, so too we can face whatever life throws at us in God’s strength. Our plans may be thwarted; we may have come to the end of our ability and feel everything is in ruins, but if we are only relying on our own strength, how are we any different to the world? Paul chided the Galatians for beginning with the Spirit and then trying to live life by human effort. (Gal 3:3) We are saved through faith by God’s grace and must learn to live life by putting our faith into action and trusting in God’s grae. No amount of planning, organisation or good ideas can be a substitute for faith. It is not enough on its own. We must do these things, but we must always also leave room for God to work in the realms we do not and never will be able to control (e.g. the weather!) Joseph was at this time brought into a high-pressure situation not of his own making, but God had prepared him for this moment. Yet again, he had to step out in faith (Gen 41:16), freely confessing that he could not interpret the dreams but God could give him the interpretation! Rule God into situations and you will see what amazing things He does as a result.

The Sound of Music counsels us to ‘start at the very beginning’, but it’s not always easy to know where a story begins! It’s very easy when looking at the Easter story to focus on the last week of Jesus’s life, to concentrate on His crucifixion and resurrection, and certainly all four gospels give us more information about this last week of His life than they do about anything else. But in Luke’s gospel, we see that the story began much earlier even than the start of His ministry or than His birth. Luke spends a large part of chapter 1 telling us about relatives of Jesus (Zechariah and Elizabeth) and the miraculous conception of their son, John.

John, the herald who prepares the way of the Lord, was a baby born to an elderly, childless couple, testimony that with God, nothing is impossible. We see also in this story the fact that it’s not always easy to deal with the miraculous. Zechariah’s ‘mistrustful words’ when the angel announces God’s plans to him lead to nine months of silence: he is not able to speak until he testifies in writing to what the angel has told him when his son is actually born.

This reminds us that waiting and silence are as much a part of God’s story as miracles and speech. Sometimes, it takes time to process what God is doing and we have to ‘wait it out.’ If you’re in a waiting time now, don’t give up. You’re in good company!

As a church, we support three children overseas: Bedline in Haiti (who will be 11 next Saturday), Innocent in Uganda and Amshika, a girl with disabilities in India. We are very grateful for your financial support for these children and are pleased to have just received a new photo of Bedline.