Categories: uncategorized
Date: 11 December 2006 12:29:00
Its funny how your own words can come back to haunt you, usually when you don't want them to. Yesterday in church, the second Sunday in advent, I heard the readings I'd written for the advent candle ceremony being used for the first time.
“Last Sunday we lit the first advent candle, which represents the hope which we have in Jesus. We light it again, a single candle which brightens the darkness with its flame, and we remember this hope which stands in the face of despair.”
I wrote that, little knowing how much it would mean by the time I heard it read back to me.
Does hope stand in the face of despair? I'm trying at the moment to see, to hope, that it does. There is something in me which knows its there. I just can't see where, or what, this hope is. Strange, we say the hope isn't and can't be overcome. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it. I hope it won't, I need to know and to see that light right now.
The sound of a voice crying out in the desert, “Prepare a way for the Lord!”. There is a voice in the wilderness, the sound of life in the emptiness, hope coming from nothing, where we cannot see it, do not expect it. Only heard by those who choose to listen for it. It tells us he is coming, he is with us.
“Grace comes to us hidden beneath its opposite” (Martin Luther). How true. We find the grace and love of God where we least expect it; light in the darkest night, love in the rejection of a pregnant woman and her family, peace in the shivering cold of winter. If we find these things in the very places and situations where they seem to be absent; if, like the wise men, we find God not where we expect him, coming in glory and majesty, but with the rejected, the poor, the suffering. Why should we be surprised that hope, too, can be found in the very depths of despair?
I wrote that then, and believed it. Lord help us to believe it, and to know it, now.