First Sunday of Advent – A Light of Hope

I admit it, I hate to wait. I hate to wait in cashier lines at the grocery store. I hate to wait on hold, I hate to wait in a doctor’s office, I even hate to wait when my computer takes a mood and goes slower than I think it should. I don’t think I am alone. I think a lot of you are just like me and find it annoying and disturbing to wait. 

Well, this season at the very beginning of the Church year is made for us. This is the season of waiting. It is about waiting for a promise to be fulfilled. The covenant is created by God, and it is a promise of salvation. It is about standing on tiptoe and believing that we have not been abandoned to chaos and strife. 

The first candle on the Advent wreath symbolizes hope. Not a superficial hope that wants good weather tomorrow or our favorite team to win some big game. It is “gut hope.” Gut hope is hope that lives deep inside us and promises us that we are not alone. It is a hope that assures us that God knows our name, and our heart is carved from His own heart. It is a hope that God loves us so much that He wants to be absolutely and completely one with us. Gut hope is a hope that is so deep within us that we find it hard to find words adequate to describe it. Gut hope is an overpowering gasp that we know at the birth of a child. It is the brightness of the light at the promise of love when an engagement ring is shared. Gut hope is the abandon we feel when we are privileged to share the moment when one we love is embraced by God. 

It is easy and understandable that we are discouraged. The world we live in is a hot mess. Political battles over candidates that we have never met shared a meal with, or dried a tear for, have and are pulling apart families, neighbors, and friends. Protest, often violent protest, is the first course of action, not the last when injustice occurs. Brokenness, nastiness, and fear surround us. Someone drives too slowly or cuts us off, and road rage isn’t met with an ugly word said in our car but a violent exchange with a gun. We are being held captive by a disease we can’t seem to conquer. Many feel isolated, if not physically, then we are overcome with our heart’s isolation. We are embraced by loneliness.

We come into this Advent 2020 much as the Israelites did at the time of Jesus. They knew poverty, slavery, victimization. They were demoralized and felt abandoned. They were slaves and were even mistreated by their own religious leaders who heaped burden after burden on their shoulders. They were sad, hopeless, and alone.

We come into this Advent in quarantine and isolation. We are far from embraces and kisses. Our masks make it hard to believe in the smiles they cover. Our very skin craves intimacy and human understanding.

Yet we come. And we hope. We hope with a “gut hope” that God will make himself known and that He will fill the darkened corners of our soul. It is that deep gut hope that pushed the Israelites forward, and it is the same hope that pulls us into this Advent season. 

God pleads with us to be patient and to ready our hearts. God pleads with us to examine and reexamine our relationships, motivations, and deepest desires. He is asking us to use our waiting time wisely. To get our lives right with who He has called us to be, who we want to be, who we hope to be.

We light a candle this Sunday for Hope. We believe that in the darkest places in our life and our world, a light will come that no amount of discord, unrest, or death will overpower. We light a candle, and we hope, we pray, and we wait.

In God’s Unending Love,

Gwen