Recently, I was watching an NCIS episode about a soldier’s remains left in Vietnam. Currently, 1,268 service men and women from the Vietnam War are missing.  This thought is still so painful for many and, despite our best efforts, we still can’t recover them all.

Not so with God.  God never leaves his child behind.  He will recover them all and see them safely to their heavenly hope.  No darkness can hide his child from his sight, no sin can pull them too far away, and no enemy can hold them from his providential power.  God recovers his wandering children, his dispersed children, his downcast children, and restores them to their rightful place as children of God with all the blessings that apply. 

Jesus says in John 14:1–3: “Let not your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God; believe also in me.  In my Father’s house are many rooms.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

Various biblical writers spend considerable time to remind us that the children of God are not lost to the chaos of this world, they are not left orphaned, they are not alone, and they are not abandoned.

The truth is that Jesus endured the pain of this world, so that we might have the hope of the next!                       

So, where is our hope?

Is it in: finances, health, possessions, family and friends, or intellect?

Yet, if we are honest, we’ve all seen: stock markets crash, the strong humbled and ravished by disease, possessions erode, rusty, get stole, get forgotten, breaking of relationships we thought couldn’t be broken, and Alzheimer’s where years of learning are forgotten.

In the end, our confidence is in Jesus remembering that our hope was sparked at his birth, sealed at his death and resurrection, and will be realized at his return.

Have you found hope in Jesus?