Advent 2020Sample

Hope for Advent

Hope. This year it feels like whatever hope I had ran out. Only glimpses of a warm feeling remain.

In Latin, the term Advent means "coming". I sit and try to imagine what the Israelites had been through by this point. Wars, slavery, leader after leader that usually ended in death or betrayal – all this time waiting for their saviour, waiting through generational trauma… and then 2,000 years ago, here we have the "coming".

He came. Is that not all our hope in two words?

He came to a world as imperfect then as it is now, born in a shed, family on the run, into an ethnic group often subject to oppression and discrimination. The Light of the World came.

It’s okay if, this year especially, you have questioned hope, if you haven’t felt it, or if you haven’t even searched for it. But even when you can’t, hope hopes for you. Hope always exists. It doesn’t pause itself when you question or when you struggle. Hope is alive, ever-moving, fighting for us, breathing life in and through us and creation. It’s okay to join hope when you’re ready. 

God knew we needed hope. That’s why he came.

"Yet in thy dark streets shineth

The everlasting light

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight"

(Excerpt from ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ – song by Lewis Redner and Phillips Brooks)

By Abbie Ametewee, Tearfund's overseas teams supporter.