Hope

We live in a world where everything seems hopeless. The economy isn’t near as strong as it used to be, debt, particularly for young adults, is rampant, teen suicide is on the rise, showing no signs of stopping. Nothing seems to help. Even religion.

Today is the second sunday of advent. Those who follow tradition will light the second candle on their advent wreaths: the candle of hope. It seems almost ironic. The words that stand-out to me when I look at the BBC’s news page are thing like rally, mourn, opposition, suffer, decry, and pollution. Where is hope?

2013 years ago (give or take), the world was waiting. Most people didn’t know it, but hope was coming. I’d imagine that their situation was similar to ours, the Roman empire was in control, they enforced this control in brutal ways, their front pages probably resembled ours. words like rally, mourn, opposition, suffer, and decry were probably plastered all over the news columns (probably not pollution, since that wasn’t really a social concern at the time…). Some people seem to think that in the days leading up to that first Christmas the world calmed down, that people walked around in a sedate manner, knowing that the Christ was coming. I sincerely doubt that image.

Rather I think that there life was similar to our everyday life. People would be running around, buying, selling, trying to scrape by with the little income that they had. Things would have been noisy, the market places would have had people trying to out-yell each other trying to get the customers. Things would be very similar to how they are now. They felt they had no hope, they saw the roman soldiers, they saw the filthy rich and their morally questionable ways of making money, and they probably asked “Where’s God?” those who knew the scriptures probably looked at Isaiah 53 and said “God, now is the time! Everything fits! Get rid of these Romans!”

I think it’s funny that two weeks later, God answered those prayers. Sorta. Jesus brings hope, but he didn’t oust the Romans, he brought a better hope than that. He brought the hope of forgiveness. He brought not the temporary hope, after all more dictators would come, he brought the hope of direct access to heaven. The dictators would continue in heaven. In the same way that the gargoyles at Notre-Dame highlight the beauty of the church, the dictators of this earth highlight the beauty of Christ Kingdom.

Today, with all the terrible things going on, let’s light the candle of hope, and remember 2 Corinthians 1:10: “On Him we have set our hope that He will deliver us”. It may not be for some time, but like the Israelites two weeks before the birth of Christ, it will happen, so long as we pray.