ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHING
November 28, 2021
I can’t express how excited I am as we begin Advent. At the same time, I will confess a hint of anxiousness as I read the news stories about a variant that has emerged in Africa. This only reinforces the need for all folks to be vaccinated and for us to think globally in our approach to vaccines. With that in mind, today is Hope Sunday, and like so often, there is a need to reinforce how Christianity has usually understood hope. It is not some empty wishful thinking or a magical incantation. We might hope for something, but if hope is to be fulfilled, it begins with God’s dream finding its way into the hearts of human beings. Once there, hope requires those same human beings to begin aligning themselves with the dream. At the time of Christ’s birthday, human beings were hoping for a new world as their world appeared to be falling apart. In response, God’s vision for a new world found flesh in a child born in Bethlehem. Some believe that is the fulfillment of hope, but it is not. Fulfillment of hope is set in motion when we begin to shape our lives so as to reflect God’s dream enfleshed in the child. We may never see that fulfillment fully realized in our lifetimes, but the moment we begin to reflect God’s dream in our lives is the moment hope finds fulfillment within us. And the world forever changes because of it.
Help me, Visionary God, to live actively into the hope you have for this world. I desire to share in the necessary work of seeing your dream and my hope come to fruition in my life and in the lives of those I touch. Amen.
