By now, you’ve probably had at least one conversation about how fast the year has flown by. These chats tend to appear in November, when the countdown to Christmas becomes real, and we scramble to wrap up last-minute plans, set holiday arrangements, and weigh in on when it's acceptable to start decorating.
It’s an odd paradox—we spend the year racing toward December 25th, only to wonder where it went once we get there! Maybe it's the hope of a break that flips those calendar pages forward so quickly. Hope for a break, a fresh start, or the simple joy of time with loved ones.
Hope often comes paired with uncertainty – with waiting. The Advent season leading into the birth of Christ is deeply connected to that mysterious tension between "already" and "not yet".
But Advent isn't a time of passive waiting, like sitting idly at a bus stop. It's active, hopeful anticipation which dares us to look beyond the capacity of our current circumstances. Advent represents God's plan for humanity's problem.
I'm a huge space geek, and one of my favourite space movies is "Apollo 13". It tells the story of the 1970 Apollo 13 mission to the moon, during which an oxygen tank exploded and stranded the three astronauts onboard inside a crippled ship, 200,000 miles away from Earth and with very few options ending in their survival.
Hope is not naive or blind to reality.
Those astronauts were acutely aware of their situation; they saw every flaw, every broken piece of equipment, and every limitation of time and resources. The astronauts had the added heartbreak of passing by the moon and never landing on it.
But rather than give into despair, the astronauts and mission control partnered together to turn their hope into action. They meticulously worked through options, used all available resources, and relied on their training, refusing to give up even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. The three Apollo astronauts followed a new star in the sky – Earth – to find their salvation.
It can be so easy to fall into the black void of hopelessness, drifting without a way to get home. Advent offers us a chance to pause during all this complexity and remember that hope isn't a feel-good notion. It's a fiercely powerful sustaining force that drives us to act, love, and persevere in ways we could never imagine.
This Advent, hold onto that resilient hope. The hope that doesn't ignore your struggles but moves and works through them. Let hope be your guiding star to look towards, keeping you moving forward and trusting in the One who is greater than our individual circumstances. Because that's the hope that believes when things are broken.
That's the hope that leads us home.
