On Hope.

Last Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent, and I had the honor of sharing a few words on hope and lighting the first advent candle in the little church I'm currently calling home.  I meant to post this last week, but it got away from me... Here's the words I shared with the congregation.  May you be blessed today and throughout this Advent season!

Hope. It’s a tricky word, especially for a grammarian like me… It’s a verb and a noun and a feeling and you can’t see it or touch it or taste it, and it can mean a million different things:  wishful thinking, intention, desire, longing, an expectation or a belief or knowledge or trust. And as I meditated on this word this week, I couldn’t get this phrase out of my head:

The thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks, a new and glorious morn.

It’s from the Christmas carol Oh Holy Night, and I found it an interesting word pairing because I don’t generally associate hope with thrill.  It seems to me that hope is something I’m clinging to, almost as a last or only resort… when all else has failed me, hope remains. 

But thrill, now that’s something I love and know well, as many of us do. It’s in the cresting anticipation and excitement when the roller coaster goes over the top and you feel like you’re flying.  It’s in the watching of the sun set over the open ocean.  It’s in the excitement of getting really wonderful news from a friend and it’s in the relief when that biopsy comes back negative.

But when I think back on those thrilling moments of my own small story, I can see hope intermingled in all of them – Those moments are a reminder and an acknowledgement that no matter what the situation, greater things are yet to come – a new and glorious morn.

And in the bigger story, the story of ages and centuries and of now, in this moment, we desperately need that thrill - the world is weary, I’m weary, with all that is happening around us, in foreign nations and in our own backyards we find ourselves separated from our creator in a way that was never meant to be and left us fractured and broken and desperate… for something greater than what we can see or touch or taste.  Jesus came that we might have life and have it in abundance…  If we could really, truly grasp that, we might begin to understand the magnitude of the beauty found in the manger, the promises he brought on his sojourn here on earth… if we could really grasp that, I don’t think we would be able to contain the thrill that is hope. 

We need this.  We need a new and glorious morn, and it’s ours to claim, a gift from the baby born in a barn who came to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free. The hope that greater things are yet to come. Not just in heaven or someday but here, on earth, now, in our stories and the larger story unfolding around us.

I pray, in those of you that feel that thrill, however small, that this season would fan it into a flame, that you could be a beacon of light and hope to those around you.  And for those of you who are feeling rather hopeless right now, I pray right now as we light this candle, from spark to flame, the Holy Spirit in ways mysterious and surpassing all understanding, would light that spark inside of you, that you would feel the thrill of hope. Amen.