Scripture: Zechariah
9:9-12
Journal: What
hope does the Zechariah passage cause to rise in your heart? What images enliven you? Why?
What does it look like to be agents of this hope in the world?
Reflection: Hope is a force of God that enlivens us
to life. We
can easily miss the radical significance of this definition to our lives. Hope is often described as the expectation
that desires will be fulfilled or as a feeling of assurance about current and
future circumstances. When someone
thinks positively or believes deeply about desired outcomes, so this line of
reasoning goes, then hope happens.
However, hope is more than a positive
attitude or elevated feeling of assurance.
Like faith and love, hope is a
force. Yes, it functions within
individuals to transform their lives.
But hope also resides and functions outside an individual’s attitudes
and feelings. The very character of hope
as energy that comes to us from God means
we encounter hope as a transforming force that we do not control.
Hope’s
mission is to save us from a false sense of aliveness. Rather than fulfill whatever fantasies claim
our hearts, hope rescues us from a diminished life. Its mission to us is congruent with its
mission to the world: to enliven all to
life and to save the world from a false sense of aliveness.
The opportunities to experience hope are
as close to us as we are to our neighbors and our bodies. God has given us the capacity to pay
attention, imagine, and enter into the wonder of life together. This capacity is also our God-given
assignment. God created us to be a home
for hope, to discern its work, and to be a people of hope. (“The Work of Hope,”
by Luther E. Smith, Weavings)
Prayer
Closing Prayer:
O
Expectancy,
born
of fertile wonder,
belabored
by narrowed hope;
craning
curious lives forward,
You
are the brother of holy surprise.
Come
startle awake
our
dozing apathy, our complacent dreams,
that
we may behold your borning, Advent cry.
Amen.
(Behold! By Pamela C. Hawkins)
No comments:
Post a Comment