Read: Romans 8:12-25
We hope for what we do not see. (v. 25)
When I was young, Christmas was the highlight of my year. At times it seemed like I spent my life waiting for Christmas (and feeling like it would never come). Yet I had hope: each past Christmas represented the promise of a future Christmas.
In Romans 8, Paul says the world awaits a day that sometimes feels like it’ll never come. Creation is groaning with a sense of futility over the effects of sin. And yet creation waits patiently because the day is coming. In the beginning, when humanity’s sin subjected creation to corruption, God made a promise to send a Savior to crush the powers of sin and death and hell. When the Savior was born and began his work, the weary world rejoiced. When the Savior’s work is done, the corrupted creation will be released (v. 21). On that day, says Paul, the children of God will be revealed (v. 19).
One Christmas plants a seed of hope that grows until its fulfillment when the next Christmas arrives. In the same way, God’s Spirit plants new life that grows in the heart of every believer. The longer the world waits, the more this new life strains toward its fulfillment. All the while, it expands and reproduces until one day we will be reborn, and the scope of redeemed humanity will be revealed. Be restless for that day, but like the rest of creation, let your restlessness be refined into hope. The promised Savior came and will come again to complete the good work he began.
As you pray, wait patiently for God to complete his saving work.
Ben Van Arragon is an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church in North America. After twenty years of congregational ministry, he now serves his denomination as a pastor wellbeing consultant in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
