Advent 2017

Ours is a day when evil and chaos seem to have the upper hand.  Hardly, a few more than a few days passes before some grim and tragic reminder greets us in the evening news.   Impossible to comprehend violence and unexplainable evil seems to surface in the most unlikely places.  And, if that is not enough, so many are going through their own version of hell.  Homes are torn asunder by divorce, sickness brings suffering and death into our family circles, and people who appear to be happy are being robbed of joy by terrible loneliness and disappointment.  Who among us does not long for a better day!

 

Advent comes each year on the Christian calendar as the first season of the liturgical calendar.  Too often it is simply noted as the season which prepares us for Christmas as Lent prepares us for the celebration of the Resurrection.  Actually, Advent has little to do with Christmas and more to do with this longing within us that is more appropriately spoken of us as hope.  Advent encourages us to hope again.  Sometimes life is so hard and difficult that we live without hope.  Or, if we speak of hope, we only do so because we know it is how we are supposed to live as Christians.  It is not because we are hopeful.

 

The truth is that hoping is a daring leap for many of our day.  How do we hope when everything about life says that it is only a thing for fools?  How do we really long for a new day when it appears that there is nothing new under the heavens as far as our life is concerned?  Advent tells us to hope.  It tells us wait for our hope.  It tells us to wait for it is surely coming.  When we gather to worship, we pray the Lord's Prayer which has those words, "...thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven..."   Such is how Jesus taught us to pray and such is how the Spirit dares us to hope.