Scripture: Romans 8:24-25
Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Thought for the Day: The great theologian, Paul Tillich, preached a sermon entitled, The Right to Hope. In the sermon, he said:
There are two kinds of waiting, the passive waiting in laziness and the receiving waiting in openness. He who waits in laziness, passively, prevents the coming of what he is waiting for. He who waits in quiet tension, open for what he may encounter, works for its coming. Such waiting in openness and hope does what no will power can do for our own inner development… Such openness is the highest activity; it is the driving force which leads us toward the growth of something new in us. And the struggle between hope and despair in our waiting is a symptom that the new has already taken hold of us.
I invite you to reread those words as they are loaded and lofty, pointing to a depth within the concept of hope that is often overlooked. Hope should always have an openness within it, an openness through which we reach toward what we do not yet know. In this season of Advent, when the world is inviting you to a lazy kind of waiting that has everything to do with Black Friday and buying on credit and glitzy wrapping, allow yourself to pause with an openness to God. Feel the tension as one who is to be in the world but not of the world; feel the tension that is drawing you to the saving act of God soon to be revealed in a stable’s feeding trough.
Prayer: Thank you, O God of Hope, for this amazing season. Give me the courage to wait and hope – to pause with a passionate belief in what is not yet fully realized. Yet in this active waiting, I trust that what is not yet is already coming into being. Amen.
LET US COME TOGETHER
TODAY
TO BEGIN ADVENT
