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REFLECTION

The theme for our reflection is “Choose hope”. To choose means to pick out (someone or something) as being the best or most appropriate of two or more alternatives. Hope on the other hand means a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen. At the end of our reflection, we shall be greatly encouraged to choose Jesus as our hope because He has the power to deliver us spiritually and physically and to ultimately grant us salvation regardless of what the world the thinks or says about Him. The nation Israel had been promised through declarations of the Prophets about the coming Messiah who will be a decedent of King David. In one of these instances, God assured the Israelites through the Prophet Jeremiah that “The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteous Saviour. (Jeremiah 23:5-6). It is, for this reason, All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?” (Matthew 12:23) when Jesus healed a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute (Matthew 12:22). On the contrary the Pharisees failed to see Jesus as the fulfilment of prophecy or the decedent of David who is the Saviour of Israel hence the Pharisees heard about Jesus healing the demon-possessed man, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.” (Matthew 12:24). Dear friend If you we were among the Israelites at the time, in whom will you put your hope, Jesus, the compassionate deliverer or the hypocritical and envious Pharisees who claim they know it all?

Jesus set out the criteria to help us unambiguously to choose Him as the hope of the world. He said to the Pharisees “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.” (Matthew 12:33-35). In other words, we must choose Jesus as our hope because He bears or produces the fruit of humanity’s deliverance and salvation. There are many charlatans and priests of other gods in our world today claiming to have hope for humanity but we must always choose Jesus Christ as our hope in a lost and sinful world because “God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:9-11). Truly He is our hope because He has assured us that “The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18-19). Finally, we must choose Jesus as our only hope because Hebrew 13:8 assures us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Shalom.

PRAYER

Dear Lord Jesus, may we not become careless by choosing this world as our hope thereby losing our salvation and eternal life. May the Holy Spirit strengthen us to endlessly put our trust and hope in You even in our most challenging times. Amen