This first week of Advent has me reflecting a lot on HOPE. Saturday was World AIDS Day, so I was remembering and praying for the people I met in South Africa impacted by the disease. On Saturday morning my friend Jon shared at a men’s breakfast about the sex trade and the work of International Justice Mission in India and around the world. My spirit is heavy as the reality of suffering, injustice, and poverty confronted me with faces and stories of HIV/AIDS and young girls forced into the sex trade. It brought to mind the lack of hope for so many around the world.
Hope is defined as, “A wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment.” The cycles of poverty, injustice, and suffering are often hopeless to escape. I remember conversations and tears of hopelessness as new friends in places like Rio, Freetown, and Cape Town have shared their stories and desperation for a better life. There is not much “confident expectation” that their wishes and desires will ever be fulfilled. Yes, we can point people to the Second Advent and Christ’s return when He will dwell among us and there will be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:1-4). But what about NOW! What about Jesus, the Good Shepherd’s, words in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
One of my favorite quotes this year is from Mortimer Arias in Announcing the Reign of God, “How, then, can we announce the kingdom of God as hope? By hoping. By living and sharing hope. By working with hope. By dying with hope! To be an evangelist is to be a sign of hope, a servant of hope, a minister of hope.”
The theme of reconciliation keeps rising to the surface as I think about hope and Advent. God teaches us in 2 Corinthians 2:19-20 that we are “ministers and ambassadors of reconciliation.” A group of 47 Christian leaders from around the world point the Church and Christians to be a people of reconciliation and hope in their 2005 paper, “Reconciliation as the Mission of God” (http://www.reconciliationnetwork.com)....
“Above all, Christians must be people of hope; hope in God’s victory in Christ and that, over time, reconciliation can break in, because this is God’s mission…This costly journey requires hope, nurtured in practices where we listen to God in worship, Scripture reading, and prayer. As we open to the pain of a broken world, we hear God’s word that ultimately, in the eschaton, all things will be reconciled in Christ. In the meantime, we do our part. It is in this hope that keeps the process moving forward…The church itself ought to be a key indication of hope, a living alternative, infusing and challenging the social sphere with a more radical vision of God’s reconciliation.”
This first week of Advent I am reminded of ultimate HOPE found only Jesus. But I am also reminded that I am called to be a minister and ambassador of that hope, pointing broken people to reconciliation made possible through Jesus! Followers of Jesus are called to be the visible signs of Advent….Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love! And, our actions need to speak as loud as our words!
