SIGNS OF HOPE -

Looks like Geoff and I are on a roll with the message of Hope this season.  
Here is our Christmas Eve Meditation from the 10pm service.
Christmas Eve 2019 - Rev Malcom Frazer 
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​This advent, this Christmas, and throughout this year
the THEME OF HOPE  has been the focus of many of my thoughts and meditations,
particularly in a world where old hopes seem to be disappearing.

So it is appropriate that we come 
in the night,
in the darkness,
to look for and turn to the light.

Where is the light?
Where is our hope in these threatening days,
as fires rage and droughts and other weather extremes, (floods and cyclones) grow more intense, more frequent, more threatening ?

As we confront that question and as we wait, as we cry out and as we look to God for hope,
there are many images in the Bible that speak to us of God’s hope, 
a hope that arises out of the most apparently hopeless situations.

-        A shoot from the stump of Jesse….(Isaiah 11:1…)

-    A people saved through the waters…..and the chariots pursuing them destroyed…     (Exodus chapters 14 &15)

-       And when they were thirsty and hungry and felt they would die……
water in the desert…(Ex 15:22-27) …and manna to satisfy their hunger….. (Ex 16)

-      A valley of dry bones, bones brought rattling together as the word of God is the spoken to them by Ezekial the prophet…then… God’s breath breathed into them…. giving these old dried bones,  life again…(Ezekial 37)

-     The barren women, too old to hope to bare children - Sarah (Genesis 18:13,14) ,
Hannah (1 Samuel 1), Elizabeth (Luke 1:5-25).

-   The promise of the return of the exiles…… and the restoration of the city…..when everything was looking so hopeless…so desolate….and the people so demoralised.     (Isaiah 51:11….etc)   (also the book of Nehemiah and rebuilding of the destroyed Jerusalem and it’s walls)

-      Then God’s people again in a time of occupation under the Romans, 
and weighed down by taxes and poverty and subjugation,
A sign of hope is given……of a young woman with child…..whose child will be called IMMANUEL, “God with us”. (Isaiah 7:14; Matt 1:23)

-    The fear filled maiden then finds a new courage and leaps for joy and breaks out into song…'.TELL OUT MY SOUL, the greatness of the Lord'. “My soul glorifies the Lord ...for He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty”. (Luke 1:46-55) 
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So it is that the light enters the darkness.
The image that we hold to tonight and which we read about in John’s Gospel - 
    “The light shines in the darkness, 
    but the darkness has not understood it”.  (John 1:5)

- Then this child grows to be a man, 
and a teacher, and a prophet,  and more. As he speaks His Words this ‘Living Word’ sparks the imagination and the hope and the life in people.
And not only through words,
but in actions - healing, casting out evil spirits, restoring, forgiving, even raising the dead.

But then, the loss of hope again.
The dark clouds of despair of suffering and pain and death on the cross.
Jesus’ death.
The death of the Messiah.
The death of God.
Everything …….lost.

Until, with the light of the third day.
A new sign,
An empty tomb…..Pointing to what?  A stolen corpse?

Then to Mary…….a Gardener appears….Or was He the Lord?

And to others disciples, miserable, aimless, on the road to nowhere, 
a stranger comes walking beside and talking with them about the scriptures and a new hope. Then, at the end of the day, the signs of BREAD & WINE. (Luke 23:13-35)                           ———————————————--

So where are the signs of hope for us today?
They are all around us….and within.
The God who reaches into our darkness and our despair,
and who opens our eyes to a whole new way of seeing, and being, and living,          
IN Jesus.  AMEN.

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A prayer by Michael LEUNIG - 

Love is born,
with  a dark and troubled face
When hope is dead
And in the most unlikely place
Love is born;
Love is always born.