Hope for Today

December 18, 2024 // Wednesday of the Third Week of Advent

Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Jeremiah 23:5-8

Reflect on the Word// 

I slid the tiny microphone up until it locked into place and watched the sound bar register my voice as I poured out my heart to a friend. Though we live thousands of miles and an ocean apart, we leave these lengthy voice memos most days. And while we’ve never met in person, our friendship has been knit together in the Lord, a consolation to one another in the long wait for our heart’s desires. 

Hope is not for the faint of heart because intrinsic to hope is waiting. We wouldn’t need hope if this would all be over tomorrow. So we need each other to remember His goodness on days that don’t feel very good—and there can be a lot of them. To remind each other what He’s done and echo back the promises we shared on brighter days to rouse hope once more. This wavering is a part of the human condition, but one that the Lord Himself has been trying to heal for generations. 

When He rescued them from slavery, it didn’t take long for God’s chosen people to forget. After all, they were hungry. And then they were thirsty. And then Moses took too long to come down from the mountain, so they fashioned a golden calf from their jewelry. They wandered in the desert, surly and disobedient, for forty years; but time and time again, the Lord provided. He was faithful. He said that He would and He did. 

Down through the generations, God patiently instructs His people to remember. Later Jeremiah takes up the refrain: Remember when the Lord led us out of Egypt? “Behold the days are coming” when, once again, He will deliver us from captivity (see Jeremiah 23:5,7).  The prophet promises that just as God came to the rescue then, He will come again to save His people.

So, too, for us. God’s faithfulness in our past is a downpayment on His future faithfulness. And so I prophesy in hope and hit send because I trust that since He’s done it before, He’ll do it again.

Relate to the Lord // Ask Jesus what hope you can prophesy today, both to a friend and to yourself.

O Antiphon:

O Leader of the House of Israel,

giver of the Law to Moses on Sinai:

come to rescue us with your mighty power!