Living in the light of hope
Welcome to Advent; please hold. It is a season much like life in which we are asked to wrestle and wait for arrival. Much of American life eliminates or reduces waiting. We can buy with one click and have it instantly or within two days. We hate waiting, but we are all waiting for something– a new job, a child, our fortune to change, a health diagnosis to improve. Waiting is hard because we feel the tension between what is and what we wish was. This tension churns up difficult emotions such as discouragement. Perhaps, you feel discouraged this week. There’s plenty in this life that would trigger that for you.
Advent offers hope for our discouragement. Hope that the restored world God promises will come just as God has come in the person of Jesus. We are not just waiting in the dark, we are waiting in the light of God’s future.
The prophet Isaiah, who is quoted extensively in the New Testament, preached to Israel, encouraging them to walk in the light of God because of the promised future God would bring about. This future offers us hope for our discouragement. Here are three practical ways to lean into this hope.
Resonate with the future
He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. Isaiah 2:4
What a beautiful picture. Weapons will be transformed into tools of cultivation and war will be no more. This verse sits outside the United Nations. Why? Because it is a beautiful vision that resonates with our hearts and minds. War, hate, division, and death should not exist. Somehow we know this.
Our ability to imagine the future can fight our present discouragement. When I was a kid we drove to NH to see family often. The drive was 6 hours long and sometimes felt like it would last forever. But you could withstand the drive because of the excitement that lay ahead. To pass the time, we’d talk about what we were looking forward to. This same practice can help us fight our present discouragement. We can imagine God’s future and let that offer us hope.
What do you like to imagine? I like to imagine Syracuse restored. The many beautiful buildings and homes are no longer decaying. The absence of stratospheres and division. All people together living in love and unity. I look forward to that day.
Watch for the hope that breaks through
Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” (Isaiah 2:3)
Imagine a day when everyone lives by the ways of peace, patience, gentleness, and self-control. That we would only delight in what is lovely, noble, true, and good. This future signaled and inaugurated in the life of Christ, breaks into our lives today. Though, sometimes we miss it.
On Thanksgiving, we sat with friends who have traveled through some difficult seasons with us and us with them. As we gave thanks for the good that triumphed, we could see how God’s ways had broken into the now. Faithfulness, grace, and mercy met each of us even when we couldn’t see it. Celebrations like Thanksgiving and Christmas are good for this. We celebrate the good because it signifies the ultimate good that will one day reign throughout the universe.
Walk this way
O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord! For you have forsaken the ways of your people, O house of Jacob. (Isaiah 2:5-6a)
Isaiah tells the house of Jacob to walk in the light of the lord because of the future reality that God will bring about. It’s not just an encouragement but also a correction we each need because there is a part of us that drifts from the ways of love. Discouragement will find us as we drift.
As a church, we will share fifty percent of our giving this December with three organizations that are walking in the light of the Lord–feeding the hungry, giving kids a bed to sleep in, and serving teen moms and their kids. These are some of the very actions and ways of living that Judah had neglected. We are grateful that we get to participate and for the work that each of these great organizations does every day. They help remind us of the hope of God’s future.
I don’t doubt that each of us will have moments of discouragement this Advent season as we feel the tension between how things are and how they could be. In those moments, remind yourself that you live in the light of hope– Imagine the future, watch for the ways of hope breaking in, and walk in the light of God’s hope.
