Hope RevealedSample

Where do you think your life is going? If you had asked me this very direct question some 15 years ago, perhaps I would have said aloud the honest thought springing to mind: “I feel like I am just failing in life…”.

I was in my twenties, living abroad, dating a lovely girl. Yet, the more I went through the motions of my own life, the more it felt like I was just… walking in darkness! It was a creeping sensation… And sometimes I wondered about God. Was God really there?

Then I opened the Bible, by myself, for the first time. Back then I didn’t realise how real, how historical the people in the Bible are. These people claimed they had received prophetic messages from God, promising his personal visit to them.

Just imagine this experience, imagine a prophet visiting your neighbourhood pointing his finger at you and saying: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light!” What would you do with this?

This happened to the people of Galilee when Isaiah spoke. They were suffering under oppression. But this great light, he said, was someone coming to them, someone divine — namely, the “Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” — a divine person who’d break into their darkness and help them.

And some 700 years later Jesus shows up in Galilee. And Jesus’ biographer Luke takes us to the historical events in Jesus’ life so we can see it. Yes, the “great light” was him. Just look at a single day in Jesus’ life and you will see a “Mighty God” coming to his people.

And that’s what happened to me too… 15 years ago, Jesus showed up in my life. And now I understand. If we live in darkness, if we lack direction in our lives, that’s only until Jesus meets us. Then everything changes.