​​It is Advent.

The time of preparing, waiting, longing, singing, praying, crying out for the coming of Jesus, the coming of God’s kingdom.

It is a time for lighting candles in the darkness.

This week, we light the first candle, the candle of hope in our Advent wreath.

Hope might be the most important candle of them all and a good beginning. Because without it, we might give up before the end, before we ever reach peace, joy or love.

But it is hard to hope when there is so much brokenness, pain, and injustice in the world. When the problems seem so big, and we seem so small. When God can feel so far away.

It can be difficult to have, to find, to hold onto hope.

However, when it feels the most impossible to do is exactly when we need hope the most. Hope is the medicine, the antidote to keep our hearts from hardening and descending into apathy and despair.

We need hope, the imagination, the dream that, in the words of Julian of Norwich “all shall be well,” when things are so clearly not well.

So, my friends, I invite you to hope with me this season, even though it might feel small and weak at times. When we all light our candles together, we will glow.  

May God fan the flame of hope in our hearts, in our church and in our world, and may our prayer be:

Come, Lord Jesus, Come.

 

 


CG+