I remember sitting on Chapel Rock at Gracefield one morning, trying to find the peace to start the day well and just feeling hungry. I turned to Kerry and told her I hoped we had a good breakfast.
“You shouldn’t put your hope in breakfast, Katie. Put your hope in the Lord.”
Kerry has a great way of teasing you with a twinkle and the extreme truth.
It’s the week for hope in the Lord. Advent has begun with candles and songs and a few gracious spots of quiet. And hope.
It’s a small word, isn’t it? Subtle enough to creep into conversation regularly unlike some of our other more jargon-y Christian terms and phrases. And simple though it may appear, it is the beginning for so much of our faith.
Hope pulls us into the future. It is what gets our feet on the floor every morning and keeps us going. We look to tomorrow and we see possibility. Hope begins.
George Steiner spoke about hope in his 2001 Gifford lectures like this:
There is an actual sense in which every human use of the future tense of the verb ‘to be’ is a negation, however limited, of mortality…’Shall’, ‘will’ and ‘if’, circling in intricate fields of semantic force around a hidden centre or nucleus of potentiality, are the passwords to hope.
Our use of the future tense reveals our inclination to hope. The words we speak demonstrate the momentum of our hearts. Forward. Onward. Towards. Will. We are built for hope.
Even if the things we hope for seem small.
I hope for a good nap from Plum this afternoon. And a good sleep for myself when night rolls around.
I hope that the kids will eat all of their lunches and feel filled and refocused.
I hope that the Spouse’s work goes well. I hope that the balance we are finding between work and family is the right one.
I hope that this season of Advent can be a meaningful time for all of us and that things to do don’t drown out times to be.
I hope for my family. For my friends. For my church and the churches and the Church.
And we hope in the Lord. Above all and behind all, is our hope in God. Which, in contrast to the above list looks far more important, doesn’t it? Jesus vs breakfast all over again. But I think that our hope in the Lord can be incarnate in all these other hopes. We hope good things and God works all things to the good. Our little hopes – the forward-pulling thoughts that get us through the day and the days – these can be the setting for Christ’s incarnation today. They can occupy the same space as the unsuitable stable and Mary’s arms, learning in the moment how to hold her baby, learning how to welcome God’s hope into the world. I will, she says. I will.
May we have time this month to ponder this ongoing incarnation with our hearts full of hope.
