Day 6 • The Week of Hope
Scripture Readings:
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Acts 11:19-26
Hope can teach us a lot about ourselves if we let it. It can tell us what our ultimate desires really are. It can tell us the kind of people we are in the way we pursue those desires. It can reveal our tenacity but also our apathy. It can reveal how patient we are but also how impatient we can be. It can also tell us how much we consider others in our desires and also how much we don’t.
The more I understand my hopes, the more I really understand myself. The things I like about myself and the areas about myself I know I want to mature. One of these areas is my relationship with both patience and hope. I have found how important it is to keep these two things married together. Because when I allow my hope to consume me without patience, I tend to get reckless and potentially cause damage in the pursuit of making my hope a reality no matter what. When I allow patience to consume me without hope, I tend to become aimless and even apathetic about my desires ever coming to pass.
We can see this tension with entire movements as well. Our world has seen its share of groups who have wonderful ideas yet lack the vision and tenacity to bring them to pass. On the other side, our world has also seen groups with such determination that they take on an “ends justify the means” posture and achieve their goals even at great harm to others. Both approaches are hurtful in their own way, especially for the poor and vulnerable. They suffer when good things aren’t accomplished on their behalf, and they also suffer when they are exploited for other’s gain.
I think Psalm 85:10 from our scripture readings for today speaks to this in a really powerful way. It says, “Love and faithfulness meet together;
righteousness and peace kiss each other.” All in the context of describing the work of God in the world, this verse poetically describes how interconnected these attributes are to each other and how central they are in God’s desire for our world.
In God’s world, love isn’t fleeting or temporary; it is deeply faithful. In God’s world, peace isn’t a passive, static state, but it is the result of proactive and just action in the world (i.e. Righteousness = right action). God’s desire for the world is for these four attributes to meet each other and be intimately woven together. As the scriptures tell us, this is not only central to how God desires to partner with us, but it is how God calls us to partner with each other. Whether it is Jeremiah prophetically confronting kingdoms and nations and calling them to work together or Barnabas quietly partnering with Saul to teach people with different backgrounds how to share community together, love and faithfulness must meet together, and peace must be the fruit of our righteousness.
This is the vision of the world we are invited to take as our own this Advent season. This is the vision of the world we are hoping for and preparing for as we anticipate the arrival of Jesus. Yet, even as we patiently hope for the time when all the world will be unified in the fourfold realities of faithfulness, love, righteousness, and peace, we can even now embody them in our relationship with God and our neighbors.
Reflection Steps:
As you reflect on this theme today, I want to invite you to ponder your relationship with both patience and hope. How balanced would you say this relationship is in your life? When you think about the things that stoke your hope and your patience, are there ways you feel you can better incorporate those things in your life? Lastly, how does faithfulness influence your perspective of love? How does righteousness influence your understanding of peace? Reflecting on these questions can really help us in our efforts to partner with God and with others. They help us remember that we truly do need each other.