This Sunday at Mass, we heard one of my favorite stories from the Old Testament. We heard about Ahaz, the ancient king of Judah, who, in the face of the huge Assyrian army is told to ask the Lord for a sign.  Not just any sign, but one “deep as Sheol, or high as the sky” (Is 7:11).  God wants Ahaz to hope, to pray big, to give Him a chance to show off His might and power and love.

Ahaz responds with the ancient equivalent of “Thanks, but no thanks.  I won’t get my hopes up.”

He says, “‘I will not ask!  I will not tempt the Lord!’” (Is 7:12) The handy footnotes in my bible say “Ahaz prefers to depend upon the might of Assyria rather than the might of God.”

In other words, he prefers to depend on the power of what he can see, the impending invasion of the mighty Assyrian army, vastly stronger than Judah, than on the might of God.  He prefers to remain in a sad trap of hopelessness rather than give life to even the smallest seed of hope that God can do anything.

Let’s be honest for a second:  I am Ahaz. You are Ahaz.

We are Ahaz.

We prefer to trust the things we can see; the circumstances in our lives we wish would change, but don’t believe will; the things we lack rather than the things that could be; what God isn’t doing rather than ask him to do big things and trust that he will.

How often do we choose hopelessness?  We hear it all the time: “Don’t get your hopes up.”  That’s code for “Don’t dare to hope that things can be different.”  We do this to prevent disappointment, as though disappointment will hurt less if we pretend that we didn’t want the thing that disappointed us.

A telescope stands atop a scenic outlook with mountains and valleys in the background.

Abandon your expectations

Friend, this wild hope is what Advent is for. As we prepare to celebrate Jesus’ Incarnation and prepare our souls for his final coming, we get to set our eyes on things above. How wild it is that God gave us access to his divine life because of Jesus? It’s nonsense. It doesn’t make sense. In our Western Christian worldview, I think we sometimes forget how unexpected God’s saving power really was.

We forget that the Jews of the time expected the Messiah to be a military leader, who would lead a revolution against Rome.

The Messiah wasn’t supposed to be a tiny baby born to impoverished parents.

And yet, that’s exactly what God did.

I do not advocate for senseless hopefulness.  I’m not telling you to ignore reality or live in a dream world where all your hopes and dreams come true.  Sometimes they don’t.  And false hope is the hope we place in ourselves, our circumstances, or the other broken humans that inhabit this planet with us.

I want you to experience real hope, which is found in God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

God can do anything.  We just have to look up long enough from our expectations to see that maybe, just maybe, God is doing something we never anticipated.

Go deeper this Advent and Christmas

Advent is already upon us, but I designed my Advent 2022 Resource Guide to offer plenty of resources to carry you into the Christmas season. Grab your free guide today by filling out the form below right now.

Treat yourself to solid resources that will make Advent and Christmas come alive for you in new ways.

[et_bloom_inline optin_id=”optin_4″]

This post was originally published on April 29, 2015.