Invitations to AbundanceSample

Restoration

We don’t have to look very far to see the effects of sin in our world and in our lives. It may even at times take more strength to be hopeful than cynical. Have you ever longed for Christ’s return to restore all that feels ugly and broken around us?

Exile

Exile was a time of great darkness in Israel’s history and carried with it a sense of abandonment. God had promised Abraham land, descendants, a king, and laws. He’d promised that Israel would be his people and he, their God. After 40 years spent wandering in the desert, they finally inhabited the land. God sent many prophets to warn them to return to him after they strayed further and further from his ways. But the people would not listen and they were ejected from their land and scattered far and wide. Their king was deposed and they lived under foreign rule. Laws were ignored, suppressed, or forgotten. God even gave them a new name, Lo-ammi, Hebrew for ‘not my people.’ It was the self-inflicted ruin of all their hopes.

People of Hope

Sometimes we find ourselves sitting in darkness, with the broken fragments of future hopes strewn at the heads of every street. Return can seem unthinkable. Mixed among warnings to return were images of what their eventual return would look like. At every point where death and hopelessness reigned in Israel’s collapse, life and hope abounded at their return. Images of wine and fatty meats are used to describe the festivities after returning to exile. Each aspect of the feast—from the food to the people to the earth that sustained them—represented a pronounced and welcome departure from the past.

Restoration and wholeness were always God’s future for his people. He would not leave them scattered but would gather them back to their land. His promise to be their God could not be broken.

What keeps you from hope? How would knowing God’s ultimate destination for his people provide some light to seasons of darkness and despair?