Advent Week 1: HOPE

I am participating in my first advent study this year with a wonderful group of ladies. We are using a bible study entitled, advent: the weary world rejoices. This week the leader asked if anyone had an experience with “hope deferred.”

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. (Proverbs 13:6)

I told my story.

My husband and I started to seek adoption of a third child in 1994 when our twins were about 8 months old and I had just found out that I could not have any more children. During our first training with the foster care system, we were told there were no babies up for adoption and we could not foster children older than our oldest child so as not to interfere with the birth order in our family. We were literally sent away.

Each year.

Each year we re-considered adoption. There was always some reason not to actively pursue a third child, but adoption never left my mind. I just prayed, wondered, waited, and did my best to trust God.

In 2005 I received a call from someone asking if we could take care of her child for a season. We said yes. Long story short, he became our son in 2006.

We waited 12 years.

Though I was much older than I had ever imagined being when I became a mom again, anyone who knows me knows I would not trade my son for anything. Anything I suffered in the waiting has completely disappeared in my memory. My son is here!

Worth the wait.

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. (2 Corinthians 4:27)  The struggles of our lives are light and momentary when compared to the eternal glory that far outweighs any duress we suffer in waiting for relief.

Jesus is our hope.

The world waited for Jesus to arrive as a baby. Now we are waiting for Him again, this time to arrive in the sky.

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18)

Even if we wait 10,oo0 more years, Jesus is returning to set up a new heaven and earth for eternity. And on that day when we turn around to glance back, our struggles in life will seem as nothing compared to the eternal grandeur stretched out before us.

Very soon, our Hope is returning again.

Picture Explanation: The son worth waiting for. We celebrated his adoption day this week. This is us on the court house steps in the morning of the very day. The top picture is me holding the son I waited for in the afternoon.

Speaking of living with Jesus as our hope: If you are interested in being contacted to participate in a One Gritty Blink Bible study, click on the Oaks Ministries link below and send me an email so I can place you on a list to be contacted as online and face-to-face studies are planned. Let’s not just focus on things in this short life, but also what counts for eternity!

Note: No part of my posts are derived from A.I. Thoughts and writing stem from my mind and heart as I process life week-by-week and continue to grow in my understanding of God and how to apply His wisdom to the world around me.

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