Hope for the hopeless!
The Christmas festival is symbolized by light, a
light shining in darkness and the coming of hope. The story of the coming of Christ
is a vehicle of hope for us all to feed our spirits and our imaginations in
dark times. We like the church throughout the world on this Advent Sunday, are
waiting for the coming Christ again, because that is what Advent means—a coming.
It is a time of preparation, waiting for Christ's coming. The preparation is a
spiritual one like Lent . It used to be a time of fasting and praying and in
some traditions it still is. It is a good time to be in church.
Prophets
spoke of the future and had a way of seeing beyond the immediate-how we need
people like that today! There had been a gap of 400 years since the people of
Israel felt God had spoken. Can you imagine being that patient today! Someone
was coming who would begin to build the upside down kingdom and restore values
to society. Truth into a society that had lost its way. He would turn people
back to God. Hope to the Hopeless! .
The prophets spoke of a specific messenger who would
prepare for the coming of the Christ, a prophet who will deliver the people, and
make the way straight. The story of the angel Gabriel coming to Zechariah
speaks of preparation for such a deliverance through the birth of a baby, who
will be that prophet, the forerunner of the Jewish Messiah. Hope given to an
old man who is childless, who has spent years ministering to God’s people in
the temple with devotion and patience-a good man.
How many
of us have given up on hope? We have stopped praying for miracles, for healing
both physical and emotional, for healing of broken painful relationships, for
change. How many of us face seemingly difficult and hopeless situations at this
Advent time? Situations that perhaps only you know of, and yet the message of
God to us is one of hope whatever our situation.
Hope comes to us in unexpected ways, when we least
expect it, in a dream, or in a moment of inspiration, through a friend, or even
someone we dislike. God uses surprising people as a vehicle of hope. We may
feel the presence of God suddenly, feel peace and strength and realize that God
is with us in all things and especially in the difficulties we face.
There can be nothing better than to hear words of
hope. An infertility broken. A diagnosis wrong. A wrong forgiven. A brokenness
mended. New possibilities imagined. Hope of a better world, hope of peace
between Muslim and Christian, in Gaza, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Africa.
Hope born of years in prison. Of such things others have much to teach us
(Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Barach Obama).
For many of us we need to feel the brush of angels
wings and the whisper of hope this Advent, this waiting time. Today this
message challenges us to live lives according to gospel values rather than
those of the consumer capitalism that surrounds us. God given hope is not
optimism, or sentimentality, based on ignorance or naivite. It is based quite
simply in a trust in God. The God who brings light into darkness, and speaks to
us.
We are waiting and making preparation for this coming!
