pregnant with hope

I don't know about you, but my soul groans a lot.  My soul groans when I get word of a precious baby who likely will not be in this world much longer.  I groan when I pray for a young father with a brain tumor.  I groan when I am told of marriages that are falling apart, of husbands and wives living parallel lives rather than the union they were made for.  I groan when I see friends grieve the loss of a brave and winsome young man who was so full of life and hope the days he walked on this earth.  And I groan when I take a good long look at the state of this fragile, dysfunctional heart of mine, so full of doubts and insecurities and anxiety and fear.   I groan when I wonder if it will ever be what it was intended to be, if it will ever experience the freedom and the wholeness and the life it so desperately longs for.  I groan.  Do you?  What has you groaning right now?  And how will you make the journey from groaning to hope?  That is what this season is all about.  Hope.  Hope that God will one day show up in the midst of all the groaning.  Hope that God cares for us more deeply than we could ever ask or imagine.  Hope that everything, someday, will all become what it was meant to be.  In fact a very wise saint once said, "The purpose of Advent is to make us pregnant with hope."  I really like that.  I want to be pregnant with hope.  I want to be so full of hope that I just can't contain it any longer; it simply must be birthed into my life and world.  O how I long for that day!  The day when hope bursts forth and is born in me and through me and around me.  It will come dear friends.  The day will come, the day when God will visit his people once again, as he did in that manger in Bethlehem, and bring his kingdom into this dark and hurting world; that day when he comes and sets everything right once again.  Come, Lord Jesus!