Longing for peace, our world is troubled. Longing for hope, many despair. Your word alone has pow’r to save us. Make us your living voice. Christ, be our light! Shine in our hearts. Shine through the darkness. Christ, be our light! Shine in your church gathered today.
As I have been reflecting on Advent this year, the word “hope” keeps coming to mind. It seems that many people are running a range of emotions where our political climate is
concerned, where our actual climate is concerned, where we are headed as a nation with our immigration policies, and where we live with the fear of a mass shooting happening
near us or near someone we love. I know that this is not an exhaustive list of the communal angst that I hear many of you talking about but these are at least a few of the topics that keep coming up.
I think that this is why the word “hope” keeps coming to mind. As God’s people, hope can be a light in the face of the darkness of our fears. The hope that I am longing for is the hope that is found in faith in Jesus Christ. Through our baptism, we have died the only death that we need to fear. In those same waters, we have been raised with Christ to new life. It isn’t easy to live this new life when the earthly troubles can cause so much fear and doubt.
In Advent, we wait for both Christ’s birth and for Christ to come again. This waiting is meant to be “hope filled”.
Pastor Steve