This post was inspired by a Christmas song, “O, Holy Night.” This is my favorite Christmas hymn, and I listen to it every year. But this year, a certain line stuck out to me: A thrill of hope–the weary world rejoices.
We’re all weary, aren’t we? 2020 has been tough on all of us. Many people have experienced hardships besides Covid-19. My own family has faced hospitalizations, miscarriages, and more. But sometimes we get so bogged down in our problems we stop rejoicing.
Yet now is not the time to stop rejoicing but to keep rejoicing. God is still faithful even in these tough times. As I said in my post When Everything Goes Wrong, the bad times don’t negate who God is, they prove Him.
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”
—Psalm 42:11 KJV
Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that we have hope in God. We have to remind ourselves to keep looking for His blessings. It’s so easy to just focus on the bad things, and by doing that, we miss the good things. Especially when the blessings come in a package we don’t expect.
Take Jesus, for example. The Messiah didn’t come to earth in the package the Jews were expecting. He didn’t take over the throne and begin ruling over the Jews right then. He wasn’t even born in a palace. Instead, He came as the presumed son of a carpenter and lived a humble life. It wasn’t time for Him to sit on an earthly throne yet, but the Jews didn’t understand that. Jesus didn’t fit their expectations, so they rejected Him.
Sometimes we do the same thing. When God doesn’t bless us in a way we’re expecting, we tend to ignore the other blessings He has given us. But what God gives us is always better than what we could ever dream of ourselves. He knows our needs before we even need them, and He knows the best way to fulfill them. And if nothing else, we have Him. We have the fulfillment of His promise in His Son Jesus. We have salvation.
And just as a weary world could rejoice then in Christ’s birth, so can we rejoice. Because in any time of struggle, He is our hope.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Jennifer Purcell
Featured Image by D A V I D S O N L U N A on Unsplash
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