Keep Lighting the Candle

Today's readings: Ps 90, 149; Isa 4:2-6; 1 Thes 4:1-12; Luke 20:41-21:4

Today concludes the first week of Advent, the week focused on Hope. Tomorrow anyone with an Advent wreath will light the second Advent candle, but they will also re-light the Hope candle, and keep lighting it until the day they light the Christ candle.

One of the joys of Advent is knowing exactly when Christ will arrive – the day is already marked on our calendars. Today’s scriptures from Isaiah, 1 Thessalonians and Luke addressed people who were waiting for their own day of deliverance, but waiting without a clear end date. These writers warned that in the meantime, things would get tougher – maybe even terrible. While none of them named a specific day, all of them were confident the day would come.

Still we wait. We watch things get better in some areas and worse in others. We know from the past that the future will be both glorious and terrible. Wars begin and end. Diseases appear and disappear. Hungry people are fed, and new people go hungry. Nothing in the world is new, yet we are made new in Christ. How are we to maintain Hope in Christ’s promises for a new and better kingdom in the face of such contradiction?

Our relationship with Hope must evolve. If faith maps our lives, Hope is no longer a pushpin marking some dream destination, but a great big arrow proclaiming “You are HERE!” When we light a candle of Hope – by visiting a sick friend, working for equality, feeding the hungry – God’s kingdom exists wherever the light of those candles shines. Like the light of a distant star, Hope is something we observe in the present, but is evidence of the past and the future.

The day we are waiting for is always today. If we are living in relationship with God, does it really matter when Christ returns? If knowing a date changes how we live, we aren’t living in Hope, but in desperation. It is in the act of lighting the candle – in letting the Hope of Christ illuminate our hearts – that Christ returns again and again.

Comfort: We hope for God’s kingdom and dwell in it simultaneously.

Challenge: Every day find a way to add light to the sum of light.

Prayer: God of Hope, I will trust you with my future.

Evening readings: Ps 130, 60

Tomorrow's readings: Ps 24, 150; Isa 5:1-7; 2 Peter 3:11-8; Luke 7:28-35