How Our Expectation Rooted in Hope is Important

As soon as the words left my lips, I knew. The tension I’d unwittingly held in throughout the year had finally been revealed. The words I spoke replayed in my mind, I guess…because…I’m not expecting anything. Yep, that was it. I stopped expecting anything to change or anything to happen. I looked at the person I shared this with and they nodded in agreement. In the throes of the past year or so, I was failing to realize that my expectation rooted in hope was important. 

Advent and Expectation

I find it especially interesting that this recognition came a couple of months before the Advent season—the time of expectant waiting. This seasonal celebration is centered around waiting in expectation of the coming of Christ. In today’s time, that’s seen as preparing to celebrate the birth of Christ at Christmas and emphasizing the anticipation of Christ’s second coming.

As a little girl, I would have this overwhelming feeling of excitement around the Christmas holiday. Cause hello, it’s the most wonderful time of the year! That is at least what the song says.

I must say, it wasn’t the gifts that drew me per se but specifically the feeling of expectation throughout the days leading up to Christmas.

Weeks before Christmas, I can recall helping my mom put up the Christmas tree and adorn it with lights and bulbs. A few days after, I’d stand in front of that mesmerizingly beautiful tree and host my own mini-Christmas concert in the living room.

No seriously. I’d put together a program I’d been working on for weeks and with hymnal in hand, perform it in front of an imaginary crowd of listeners. I did this and so much more because of the pure, unexplainable excitement I had centered around this time of year.

I had not come to learn about the Advent season until years later. However, unbeknown to me, I guess I’d been in my own little way observing it.

As I’ve grown older, the excitement has drastically died down.

Expectation and Daily Life

I can’t help but notice how the waning of gleeful expectation can transfer over into daily life. Year after year of living in such a sinful world plagued with so much pain, loss, sickness, and disappointments can from time to time taint our will to expect anything to change. The word expectation eventually becomes nothing more than a word that’s avoided when our hearts have grown weary.

We go from,

I believe that this is the year that things will change!

Perhaps this will be the year breakthrough occurs!

It hasn’t happened yet but maybe…just maybe this will be the year things turn around.

To eventually finding it hard to expect anything at all.

I can imagine the saints of old experienced periods of feeling the same way. Believe it or not, they too experienced a great deal of pain, loss, sickness, and disappointments as well. The only difference is, they were living in this world and waiting in great expectation for the promise of hope to appear. This hope was and is the promised One, Jesus, that had been prophesied over hundreds of years ago by the prophets and their forefathers.

Ahem…did you catch that? Well over hundreds of years waiting on a promise from God! Perhaps year upon year thinking,

I believe that this is the year salvation will come!

Perhaps this will be the year redemption occurs!

It hasn’t happened yet but maybe…just maybe this will be the year the Deliver will make His grand appearance!

The Result of Expectation Rooted in Hope

I love the New Living Translation version of Luke 2:25,

“At that time there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon. He was righteous and devout and was eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come and rescue Israel…”

Simeon in particular, waited eagerly for a generational promise to come to fruition. He had a great expectation of God fulfilling His promise of hope to God’s people. Furthermore, He believed in God’s assurance that it would happen during his lifetime (Luke 2:26). Simeon’s expectation was greatly secured in this promise of hope, that he was led by the Spirit to go to the temple where King baby Jesus was.  And there, Simeon literally beheld the hope he and many of those before him desperately longed for. His expectation rooted in hope proved to not be in vain.

My thought is, what if Simeon grew weary of eagerly waiting? What if he stopped expecting? I’m almost certain he wouldn’t have been among the first to experience the long-awaited hope.

One common theme we can take from the Bible is, God doesn’t save His people to then abandon them. Knowing this, we can trust that Christ hasn’t saved us from sin to now abandon us in this daily walk of life. He still saves, redeems, and delivers.

Truth is, things will change as our greatest hope, Christ, gives us the power to overcome this world through Him. And we wait in great expectation of His return when all will be made right.

This year, I’m praying for the childlike spirit of the little girl I once was. The one that eagerly waits with great expectation rooted in hope. And not for only the holiday but I want it to cross over into my day-to-day life. Christ really is our only hope. Because of that, let our expectation be rooted in the hope we have in Christ as our Salvation, Deliver, and Redeemer.