How Hope Comes (Roxanne)

Advent 2023

Welcome to SoulStream’s Advent reflections. We are delighted to present this wonderful gift from Laurel Pritchard. Join us each week during Advent as we embark on a journey of paying attention, watching and waiting, and savoring every moment during this season.

In the Christmas story recorded in Luke 2 we are shown several vignettes: the census is declared, a journey to Bethlehem begins, swaddling clothes brought to a rough manger, an angel appears, a whole pile of angels appear, and running shepherds arrive. Each of these moments are snapped like photographs. And then in verse 19 we read, “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

As we approach Advent this year, I’d like to invite us to do the same. In the next four weeks I’m wondering if you’d join me as we watch for the ways that hope, peace, joy and love are coming to us? These moments probably won’t be delivered to you by census-takers and shepherds but by the people in your shops and on your streets.

I’ve been captured in this season by my own small encounters that can be treasured and pondered. These brief interactions are reminders that God keeps coming to me in love. This love is so often carried in the bones and flesh, laughter and care of an image-bearer who might not even be aware of the light they carry and share.

In the next four weeks, you can expect a small poem each Friday that offers one moment to ponder, followed by a question about how you have noticed the week’s theme in your own life. It is my hope that as we watch and wait in this season there will be much to notice and savour.

~ Laurel

How Hope Comes (Roxanne)

by Laurel Pritchard

It was cold. I was late, in and up the stairs,
hoping the usual tests would be routine.
I stood, took my turn,
held my breath and hurried back out.
Then I saw her.
She was focused on her book, in a yellow chair,
her blue gown swathed around her.
With a jolt, 30 years melted.
She’d been there through the roughest patch of my first year,
strong, solid, confident, patient, regulated (long before that was cool).
Spontaneously, I wrapped my arms around her and touched her soft skin.
We held hands as she waited for her turn which was not at all routine.

This is how Hope comes
in our shared humanity.
We come rushing in all alone
And leave altogether.

With whom have you shared hope this week?