For those of you who may not know, I’m a huge Indianapolis Colts football fan. In fact, my family gets a little concerned about me during the games, during the autumn football season, because I can get pretty intense. Weather I’m physically at Lucas Oil Stadium, you know yelling and screaming, or if I’m in my own living room screaming, the dogs underneath the table in fear or making my neighbors wonder if they should call the police for a domestic disturbance. But I’ve learned over the course of this season, it’s been a tough season for Colts fans because our hopes have been dashed multiple times. So, if you follow the Colts at all, we’ve had multiple games this season where we’ve been two scores up, even more, in the second half against really great teams, only to watch them completely fall apart at the end of the second half and lose. In the most recent occurrence was on November 28th. Tom Brady and the defending champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers we were more than two scores up heading into the end of the game but, like I have watched happen over and over again, the Bucs started to come back, and you could watch the momentum shift. And I remember looking at my kids going, “here we go again, the Colts are gonna meltdown, we’re going to have another disappointing loss,” and sure enough that’s exactly what happened in the last minutes of the game. And we walked to the car once again with our hopes dashed in disappointment. Well, that night happened to be the first Sunday of advent and, as we were lighting that first candle as a family, the hope candle, I started thinking about how my hope as a Colts fan is so much different than my hope as a follower of Jesus. You see, we know, or we sense the Colts are going to disappoint us because we have watched over and over again, especially this season, how they have done that to us, but with Jesus it is completely different. I’m gonna read you a quick passage of scripture. Actually from Titus chapter 2 says, “for the grace of God has been revealed bringing salvation to all people.” You see before Jesus was born, the people of God had to look forward to the coming promise of the child, of the savior, of the Messiah. It says so, for the grace of God has been revealed. Now we on the other side of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, we get to look back on that promise and now it says while we now look forward with hope to that wonderful day when the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ will be revealed. So, we are in this unique period of time where we can look with hope. Now before Christ came, they looked with longing for the coming Messiah. Now we can look back on a promise fulfilled and know that the next promise is assured. So, unlike being an Indianapolis Colts fan this year, we don’t look back on continued disappointment only to anticipate it again in the future, but our hope is rooted in the promises of God and in the coming of a child into history to make right what we could not make right. So, I want to encourage you as we head into this Christmas season. We have a hope that will not disappoint, we have a hope that is rooted in a fulfilled promise through a son that was born unto us. A son was born a savior who is Christ the Lord, so we can look forward now and know that that promise for us and our hope is secured. Hang on to that in this Christmas season.
