Dear East Heights, UMC Friends and Members:

This is the thirty-fifth installment of our mid- week devotional coming to you during this time when our church family cannot meet in person due to the coronavirus. Please be sure to find our online worship each Sunday at ehumc.org.

From the desk of Paige Nelson

In “normal” times, our Youth Sunday School classes use a curriculum that is published by our United Methodist Publishing House, Cokesbury. We have it on an automatic shipment plan, but have the option to skip a quarter, if needed. Because of the pandemic, we have, unfortunately, had to “skip” the last 2 quarters. The lessons for this next quarter were inadvertently shipped to us. Since we needed to send it and some of the Children’s curriculum back, Pastor Kim came to my office to get mine so we could ship them back together. When I pulled it out of my mailbox, I noticed the cover for the first time. The theme for the Winter 2020-21 Session is HOPE. Hmmm I thought, maybe we should keep it?

Later that night, I was telling Scott about this and he kind of summed it up jokingly…”so you had HOPE, but you shipped it back.” Sounds a little bit like a Seinfeld episode, doesn’t it? However, that seemingly routine evening conversation about our day really stuck in my head and began to penetrate my heart.

“So, you had HOPE, but you shipped it back.”

Because of the world we live in, it is sometimes too easy to believe that all HOPE is lost or at least it’s playing a really good game of hide ‘n seek and we can’t seem to find it. We don’t tend to see HOPE or hear about it on our social media feeds or from the media. It’s not necessarily something we talk about in daily conversation. Or, we may, but many times it’s our own fabricated worldly hope instead of the HOPE that Jesus gives.

We are just a week and a half away from embarking on the journey of Advent, beginning with the First Sunday on November 29th. Advent is a time set aside to help us prepare our hearts to welcome the Christ Child once again. It is a time of HOPE-filled expectation. Traditionally, the four Sundays leading up to Christmas are commemorated by lighting a candle. Each candle reminds us of the HOPE, Peace, Joy and Love the Christ Child brings into a seemingly dark world.

Now more than ever, we need to not only once again hear the story of the Christ Child and the HOPE, Peace, Joy and Love He brings, but actually believe it to the very core of our soul and then live into that HOPE.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to put Jesus in a box with some straw stuffed around Him so He won’t break and ship Him back.

I want to keep Him and the true HOPE only He can bring to the seemingly dark and chaotic world we live in today.

Romans 15:13 says “May the God of HOPE fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with HOPE by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

That’s my prayer for us today and every day.