Friday, December 11, 2020

Hope: #AdventWord Day 13

 

Hope is our family’s word for the season. Hope is our word not because it is easy, but because hope is urgent. Hope is beyond trivial and more vital, the very thing that will carry us forward and out of this madness. We hold on hope tight knuckled as a family, aware of both our privileges and the real stresses that have deeply affected us over the course of the last nine months. Hope also gives shape and substance to our lives, living into the hope for relief and deliverance and health as best we can. Karl Barth said it best when he preached at a Basel prison in 1956:

“Hope is joy, is expectation of a hidden treasure in store for us. Although invisible at present, it will most certainly be uncovered one day, and will be ours. To hope is to live in this expectation and in this joy.”  

This Advent, carpe spem, seize hope. Do more than wish and wait for change and relief and loving kindness to win the day, play your part to draw this eternal hope into the present. And I hope you will wear your mask while you do whatever it is you feel called to do.