I’ve noticed a craving in my soul to slow down, and a resistance in my mind and body luring me to keep scooting around, run from all the things and feelings I’ve been avoiding now for several months; avoiding because I know there are many griefs and hopes in my heart that also live among a hopelessness. In just the last six months my uncle died, a friend of mine took her own life, the one-year mark of my grandpa’s passing came and went, and many other simple and complex griefs made their way in between. When I actually stop to think about this, it’s no wonder I feel a resistance. And I wonder if I have an insecure belief about God, that He’ll hold me if I let all this grief and unrealized hope catch up with me.
With Advent among us, I wonder if the hopes I have are shadows of those greater Advent hopes: the hope of the incarnation of the Living God, of a Savior born for us who embodies innocence and purity — both already wonderfully realized; and the hope of Christ’s triumphant return, the arrival of His Kingdom fully revealed, a broken creation restored and remade, and all pain, grief, loss, wickedness at an end, while wonder and love and worship embody us, forever.
These are hopes He’s already secured and promised and given to me, with soft joy and tears in His eyes as if He were proposing to me on Christmas morning; some we know now, some in part, and the rest we’ll know fully when we walk through that mirror into the Land of the Living.
While I try to honor this craving for slowness, I find myself struggling with God to help my whole being quiet itself; I pray to the One I love to help me set my heart on these already secured and promised hopes, and hold these others with an open hand, offering them as a fragrant sacrifice to Him while I wait. For He has offered me a greater Hope for my broken body, mind, and soul, and for every other seemingly hopeless hope I hold in my heart.
There’s a tension in Advent of acknowledging a middle within a larger Middle. We remember the long waiting of the Messiah’s arrival as we wait for His arrival, again. It is a sacred, holy place where I feel invited to let the weight of a year settle in, offer it as a sacrifice to my Maker, and remember the Coming of a little babe so humble and pure, who blew a flame of hope in the hearts of Mary and Joseph, of the shepherds and the magi, and in me, again.
God in the flesh, here for me?
If He did this, why wouldn’t He be here to hold me now?
The wonderful beauty of following Christ is the security of a hope around our waist that can never be moved or taken away — a feeling of sweet water on our lips in a wild desert reminding us that an eternal destination is promised, and is on its way, and is already here. Even among grief I’d rather run away from.
No other worldview or religion offers this kind of free gift or promises to fill me with Life from on High so that I can persevere in becoming who I really am and come to know who God really is.
This is what I want — this is what I was made for. This is the Hope that all my other hopes point to.
Maybe you have hopes that have been deferred, making your heart sick with grief. If I’ve learned anything about grief, it’s greatest lesson is that it shows us what and who we really love. So, while we grieve the hopes that will be unrealized this season, may we remember the ones we have a confident assurance in, the ones that are already guaranteed to us. May this poem blow Living Hope into your weary, or settled, or joy-filled, or dissociated heart. May it be like a flame of fire that licks us awake – “a thrill of hope,” if you will – unto expectancy for the coming of our promised Deliverer, Friend, Lover, Brother, Helper, Redeemer, and King.
For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6 CSB
I am certain that I will see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart be courageous. Wait for the Lord.
Psalm 27: 13-14 CSB
I love this song during the Advent season. It moves my heart to remember: ah, yes. He is the true thing my soul longs and hopes for.
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