Her parents called her “Dinny”. It was just a nick name, but it was more suitable for a young girl than her given name. When she was 5, her neighbors invited her to attend church with them. Every Sunday they picked her up and brought her to Sunday School at Grace Bible Church where she learned about Jesus and accepted Him as her Savior.
Two years later, her quiet childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area was disrupted by terror. On December 7th, 1941 a bomb stuck Pearl Harbor where her older brother was serving as a Navy Seaman. The whole community was paralyzed with fear – would Japan drop bombs on California next? Everyone was anxious and afraid about the war, but the telegram Dinny’s family received a few days later, plummeted her parents into despair. Her brother was officially “Missing in Action” after the USS Oklahoma sunk just 20 minutes after being hit by a Japanese missile. Darkness enveloped her family with the gravity of this news.
But while her parents mourned the possibility that their only son was dead…Dinny prayed. She believed that God listened to her prayers and she hoped that somehow, God would bring her big brother home.
Hope….
When we think of hope – we often think of a circumstance, a relationship or a situation that looms dark on the horizon of our lives. Like a raging battle – where danger is threatening, and suffering seems imminent.
It’s interesting that “hope” is most closely linked with feelings of “despair”.
Maybe that’s because the challenges of life have a way of stealing our optimism and hopefulness. It seems that the reality of life in a “broken world” can make us cynical, anxious, afraid or paralyzed with grief.
A recent Barna study revealed that today’s women are more overwhelmed and anxious than any previous generation. In fact, those between the ages of 18-35, who have never known life apart from the internet, are the most paralyzed with anxiety.
Information overload has, in effect, stolen their joy and robbed them of their hope for a better future. They know too much about the state of the world and all the things that can potentially go wrong. Consequently, they are living in bondage to the “what if’s”. Frozen. Unable to look at the future with any sense of confidence or expectation of a better world –either for themselves or for their young children.
Now, of course, some things are still easy to hope in… like an upcoming vacation, a job promotion, or a new baby.
But it is in the darkest places of our lives…. when those battles are most poised to overwhelm us… that we cry out to God for a kind of hope that only He can provide.
It’s a supernatural hope! A God Sized Hope!
Will you think about your life for a moment?
- What battles are you engaged in right now? (e.g. Work, Family, Finances, Marriage,)
- Where are you taking hits? Feeling worn down? Beginning to Lose hope?
- What circumstance seems most despairing to you? (e.g.Health, Career, Politics, Faith, Romance?)
- Is there a relationship that seems broken beyond repair – where reconciliation seems impossible? (e.g. A Spouse, an estranged friend or hostile family member, or a dying loved one)
- How would you answer this question?: “I need HOPE right now for __________________.”
Living Hope
For 400 years God was silent to His people. He spoke His last word of warning through His prophet Malachi and then didn’t speak again for four centuries. These silent years are represented in the gap between the Old and New Testament of the Bible. Can you imagine how hopeless the Jewish people felt during these years of silence? Had God given up on them? Was He still there? Did He still care?
Now, aren’t these the same questions we ask when we are in danger of losing hope?
But then, out of the darkness there was flicker of light. Another prophet, John the Baptist emerged and began to proclaim news of great hope…the Messiah was coming.
Jesus was born into the world through the womb of a virgin named Mary: The Son of God embodied in human flesh. He is the light of world who came to dispel the darkness of human life. To bring Light and HOPE to a broken world.
Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
It just takes a flickering flame to dispel darkness, and so the light of Jesus illuminated HOPE for all mankind. No longer was God silent. No longer was God speaking through the prophets. God Himself came to earth to share His good news with us. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. He came to rescue us from sin and death. To assure us that He sees us, He loves us, and He knows our desperate need for HIS saving grace.
In Jesus, we don’t have a “hope so” kind of hope. But an invitation into a living hope because Jesus took our sins upon himself on the cross and set us free from death and despair.
Listen to how the Apostle Peter describes this kind of Living Hope in 1 Peter 1:3-9
Praise to God for a Living Hope
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
This Living Hope is yours through Jesus Christ. This joy is available to you. God wants to rescue you from your hopelessness through a personal relationship with the Jesus.
- He is the God who came through the womb of a young virgin named Mary.
- The God who lived among people and taught us about His great love for us.
- The God who died on a cross so we could be forgiven of our sins and never face judgment and shame.
- The God who rose to new life and is alive in heaven right now praying for us and listening to our prayers.
- The God who sends His spirit into the soul of every person who says… Yes! I believe it is so!
This is the Living Hope that God has provided for us and invites us to enjoy.
This is the Living Hope that little Dinny had as she continued to pray for her big brother. As Christmas approached, her family grew more despairing. Surely their son was dead….but would his body ever be recovered from the bowels of that ship buried deep in the Hawaiian harbor? The Navy was silent.
Still Dinny prayed.
And then…on Christmas Eve…without any forewarning…her brother came strolling down the middle of Curtis Street where their little house resided. He was alive!
After the bomb hit his ship, he was able to kick out the porthole and swim through burning waters to safely. He never talked much about what happened that night, because the pain of losing so many of his Navy friends was permanently seared in his heart. But the miracle of answered prayer forever strengthened little Dinny’s faith in the God who hears and the God who cares.
That little girl was my mom, Ella May Wilcox Owenhouse, and her brother was my Uncle Mayland Wilcox. Mayland lived for 93 years.
Where do you need Hope rekindled right now?
What battle is raging in your heart?
What fear and darkness is threatening to steal your joy this Christmas?
Will you pray with the faith of a child – not as one who has grown bitter or cynical about life – but as one who dares to hope beyond all reason for God to do great things?
Christmas reminds us that God is with us. Jesus is Emmanuel. He hears our prayers and He is able to do far more than we can ever think or imagine.
Will you place your hope in Jesus this Christmas?
Mary Ann Noack 