ADVENT HOPE: Beyond Wishful Thinking

by Bradley Jersak, SoulStream Partner

In modern culture, the word hope is normally used as a subjective, psychological state of feeling hopeful and measured on a scale from hopelessness to confidence. It can be used as an adjective for optimism or, more negatively, wishful thinking. Today, “I hope so” can even be a euphemism for “I doubt it.”

To a significant degree, that inner sense of hope that good things are coming is crucial to our mental and spiritual health. On the other hand, we know from hard experience that attaching ourselves to outcomes is also perilous. And since we fear disappointment, people of my disposition are wary of ‘getting our hopes up,’ especially if we’ve had the carpet pulled from under our feet too many times. As the proverb says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.”

The disappointment of hope often escalates at Christmas, whether it’s a missing item from the gift list or a missing family member at the gathering. Worse, when Christmas is marked by the grief of our first time without a departed loved one or devastation to one’s property or family in war-torn arenas of violence.

And yet Advent Hope is not an exception from these scenarios—hope is not a lie disproven by disappointment. The Nativity story invites us to find hope in precisely these shadows. Hope is uncannily resilient. As the lyric says, “Hope is fragile, but it’s hard to kill.” Why is that?

I’d like to posit that the hope that’s difficult to kill is more than optimism and far more than wishful thinking. It’s more than a subjective state and doesn’t ebb and flow with my emotional weather patterns. There’s a Living Hope described in Scripture that, even if killed, shows a stubborn pattern of resurrection:

¹¹ For the Grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, ¹² training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, ¹³ while we wait for the blessed Hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ (Titus 2:11–13).

In this text, I’ve amended the NRSV to capitalize both Grace and Hope – where the pastor refers to an already-here Grace and a surely-coming Hope. Christ, the Light of the World, is our Hope, not because we hope he might come, but because he is the One who came and the Future who IS coming for Whom we watch and wait—not just at the end of history, but in our lives, again and again. Our Hope is a Person whose constant presence IS an inevitable arrival.

How that looks for you, for me, for us… I’m not as sure anymore. But rather than creating our own narrow expectations of what shape Arrival must take (those always falter), we lean into the Living Hope, Who promises to come. Yes, even in tiny packages in bristly mangers in obscure towns. Even if the how, where and when of Light’s dawning leaves us bewildered, our watching and waiting for the Living Hope stable-sized (Christmas dad pun) by the grace we’ve already experienced into faith in the One who is coming, when “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”