Advent: Hope

After seasons of warmth, the growing season, the harvest and the beauty that is autumn (in which I relished for an extended season from Quebec to home feasting on the colors and refreshing cool) we enter winter with its attendant palpable gloomy gray days. It’s a time when we begin to long for the better seasons. But this season offers a needed quiet, a respite from labors. Freed from many daily outdoor chores and activities. It is a time to nourish our interior life, our spiritual life. The sun sets at its earliest right now (4:33 CST here in Franklin in early December). Interestingly, by Christmas we will already be experiencing later sunsets. Being that most of us learn better with visual or practical examples Advent takes advantage of our learning style AND the regularly occurring rhythms of the seasons to instill spiritual truth. So today Sunday (November 30, 2025) is the first Sunday of this Advent season focusing on Hope.

Isaiah prophesied into such a hopeful future:

2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. 6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. - Isaiah 9:2,6,7

And St. Paul reminds us that the Holy Spirit instills hope from within the heart of the allegiant (one who trusts and follows Jesus as Lord and Master) believer. Be encouraged by the progression in steps of our walk with God culminating (in this earthly life) in Hope:

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. - Romans 5:1-5

Despite the losses we see around us, friends who have departed, the strife of political discord, the physical (and perhaps relational) separation we can feel, Advent calls us to wrestle with these feelings for our spiritual good: that we may appreciate and yearn for Jesus’ second coming as indeed he came once by promise, so we take hope.

Jesus came long ago as a little child he will indeed come again as the victorious reigning king he truly is. And that gives us hope.

This year a men’s accountability group of which I am a part spent considerable time examining and hopefully incorporating the “practice of the presence of God”, daily into our lives using the book of that title by Brother Lawrence as a guide. It is not just for this season but is the total essence of life. But this season invites each one to consider anew or reinforce our spiritual life and God’s unfailing promises. We await with anticipation the second Advent, Jesus’s return, Maranatha!

Hymn for the week: “Let all mortal flesh keep silence” https://youtu.be/Q8ByNT1m8V4?si=cFmNBGSkNrv-uKoX