More than Just a Song: The Story behind “Hope is Born”

400 years. Scholars believe 400 years spanned between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament. 400 years with no prophet. 400 years of silence from God.

I imagine if I lived during those 400 years, I would have looked at all the promises God made—promises of a coming Messiah, a Savior to finally break my bondage of sin—and I would have wondered if God truly planned on fulfilling these promises. 400 years of silence would feel like 400 years of abandonment. 400 years of broken promises.

Do you ever feel like God is silent in your life? Do you ever feel like the promises He has made to you have been forgotten or broken? What words from God have you given up on?

You see, as a world that only sees a fraction of what God is working out, 400 years of silence could have seemed like God had abandoned His people. In reality, 400 years of silence was 400 years of preparation.

Just because God is silent does not mean He is not working.

“Hope is Born” was written under the idea that a hopeless people found hope with the fulfillment of God’s promises to His people. Hope is defined archaically as a feeling of trust. The hope manifested in Jesus was the reality that we could always trust God’s word.

After 400 years, God sent the greatest gift He could have ever given the world: Jesus. The promised Messiah had finally arrived in the form of a helpless baby boy. The fulfillment of every promise and every Messianic prophesy finally came to pass. Can you imagine the rejoicing that must have taken place? After 400 years, God breaks the silence with the manifestation of all He said would come.

Even still, the world did not know Him. Even the people who had been promised this gift from God doubted Jesus really was the promised King.

The Israelites expected a warrior king. A fighter who would overthrow the Roman oppression of their people. Instead they got a baby. The baby Messiah came to a people removed from God in order to bring them home., and the world could not understand that yet.

Perhaps our lack of faith, our lack of trust that God is working in the silence, can cause us to over-criticize the fulfillment of God’s promises in our lives.

Truly, the answers to our prayers rarely come in the way we expect. But it comes in the way God plans, and how could we want it any other way? It is foolish to think that we as humans, who only see a thread in the whole tapestry of God’s plan, could think to know how God should work.

Don’t let the silence discourage you. Let your heart be pliable to God’s will and to His plan. Know that He works all things for the good of those who love Him. Trust His timing.

Hope for today, and hope for the future, has already come. The baby who was born to fulfill all of God’s promises has paid the price for you to participate in the hope that God offers.

Hope is knowing that time and time again, throughout history, God has kept His promises. Why would He stop now?