Looking for Hope
Advent 1, Year B ~ Mark
Kenwood UMC ~ November 30, 2008
You are checking into a hotel in a foreign country, on a routine business trip. Suddenly masked gunmen burst into the lobby, and you take refuge with others in a ballroom. You wait, in the dark for 6 hours, hearing gunfire all around you and waiting to be rescued. Finally, the group smashes through a glass window and shimmies to the ground on curtains when they realize the building has caught fire. These are people looking for hope.
You have worked for your company for 5 years. Economic times have gotten tough. You keep hearing rumors of trouble, difficulty making payroll. You watch stock plummet. And one day you come into work knowing in your heart that today is the day. Before lunch, you and 699 others are let go. These are people looking for hope.
You have known this day was coming. For months you have watched your beloved family member, knowing they are slipping but not quite being able to put your finger on it. You’ve watched the behavior change, the symptoms increase. But today is the day where you know, beyond a doubt, that you must get them to the doctor. This is a family looking for hope.
This is a world looking for hope. Each of these situations is real, each has happened in the last month in our world—and most have happened more than once. And everywhere I turn I hear hopeless words. People shake their heads at the economy. People shrug their shoulder at governmental unresponsiveness. People stop responding to stories of poverty and violence because they are too difficult to hear and truly absorb. It is almost too much to bear. We find ourselves walking around with this sort of uneasy feeling in the pit of our stomachs waiting for what is next. That’s hopelessness, friends. It is a feeling, a reality, a way of life.
It’s a feeling that’s a lot like the Jewish people in the time of Christ. They were worn out, burned out, shut out and out of luck. And into that hopeless existence came Jesus, saying to them that after days of darkness and angst there will be a coming, a coming of the Son of Man. After those days a new day will dawn. We don’t know when that new day will come. We have no way of predicting it. Jesus simply tells us to be watchful for it.
But in order to be watchful, we have to believe it will actually happen. We have to have hope. We have to believe that this time of darkness and loss is not the end. Brothers and sisters, we have a choice. We can choose to live another way, to live as people of faith. Now, making that choice is not logical—but hope is not logical. We don’t think our way into hope. We don’t plan our way into hope. We live into hope.
If, this Advent season, you really believe that God’s salvation is coming into the world, then live like you do. Refuse to surrender to the discouragement and hopelessness of the world around you and chose hope. Chose to live into the new reality that God has promised. Choose to look for that reality every moment of every day. Be a person who looks for hope.
How can you look for hope this Advent season? Change your mindset. Refrain from telling people how terrible the economy is, and tell people how you believe that there will be an end to this downturn. Refrain from watching or reading the news obsessively to hear of the stories of loss and angst. You know, I find that the more I read about the terrible things that are happening, the more convinced I become that they are terrible. When I am able to step back—and by that I do not mean to ignore what is happening in the world but to put it in proper perspective—well, they are not nearly as terrible any more.
Take time to share hope with friends and family. Take time to tell them you believe God will bring better days ahead. Take time to share hope by investing in hope if you are able—giving financially to those in need, spending time with the poor or the sick, adopting a Fox Holiday Sock or a Salvation Army Angel.
This season, look for hope. But do one thing more—become the hope you are looking for. Become a part of God’s plan of hope and salvation for the world. Expect that it is happening, and live into that expectation. Love, the Lord, is on the way.
