Advent Visions

December 3:  Hope

The first Sunday in Advent we lit the "candle of hope."    The flame of hope in the human heart is sometimes the only thing that gets us through a hard time.    Desmond Tutu said that "hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness."  

Often the darkness seems overwhelming, and sometimes the future itself seems barren.   Wishful thinking is not a very mighty antidote to this kind of despair.   In fact, wishing and hoping are too distinct things.   As children, we make lots of wishes.   We blow out candles on our birthday cake and make a wish for something:  a pony, perhaps, or a new bicycle.   We stand in the yard in the dusk and look for the first star to appear in the sky, and make a wish.   It's fun to imagine some Potentate of Fate trying to decide whose wishes to grant.

But wishing for a bicycle is different from wishing for enough money to pay the rent, or wishing for a cure for a loved one's cancer, or wishing for a world free from suffering or fear.   Hope is the light that keeps us believing in the future, that keeps us loving in unlovable times.    Hoping requires courage to go on.    Like many immigrants, John Macmillan's father dreamed of a new life in America.   That hope led him to come to this country, and to work and save enough money to send for his wife and children in 1929.   His hope, steeled with the courage to act, made his dream possible.

We pray in Advent that a holy breath will blow on the embers of hope in our lives, so that we may continue to strive for what we cannot yet see.   

HOPE

Just a little flame,

hope can warm the heart enough

that faith can grow.

We reach our hands out

toward the fire,

and see something there

in the flickering light

to make us breathe again.

It is a glimpse of what might be,

something to be grasped

when all else is slipping away.

Courage comes from seeing

that we are not alone.