Advent Guide: You BelongSample

The Hope of Eternity

I'm writing this in the summer. You're reading this in December. That is a statement of hope.

As I write, my son hopes to start his freshman year of college in the fall with at least some financial aid ... if FAFSA gets straightened out. That's a statement of hope, too, mixed with some exasperation.

Also as I write, my mother-in-law is preparing for shoulder replacement surgery next week, so she can use her right arm again and so she will not experience excruciating pain when she attempts to use it. We hope for a good outcome.

We also hope my father-in-law's cancer treatment will enable him to spend another Christmas with us. It enabled him to attend his grandson's high school graduation a few weeks ago. We live week-by-week by hope.

But we live by hope in a more far-reaching sense, because we also live each day in the hope of eternity and in Jesus' return, which follows his first arrival a little more than 2,000 years ago as a baby, a human baby, his mother's hope and, what's more, his people's hope.

And he was much more than just a human baby. He was "God with us" – fully human and fully God. I hope to understand that someday.

Understood or not, it doesn't change Jesus living with us, as one of us, fulfilled a long hope. And it wasn't just his living. It was also his dying and his returning to life. These fulfilled an even longer hope and are the reason for our hope in eternity still.

My father-in-law preached this hope for 45 years as a pastor and another 11 years in a different ministry role. As I write, he continues to live each day in the hope of eternity – a living hope sent to us for us.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard and editor of Justice Looks Like.