Finding Hope in Advent

Dear Friends,

This coming Sunday one of our great St. Andrew's Advent traditions makes a comeback: Advent Family Night. All are encouraged to attend this fun evening of food, crafts, music, and stories. 'All' means you, even if your family no longer includes small children. In fact, even if your family is just you, come and be a part of this festive night celebrating our Advent themes of hope and expectation.

Ours is a world that desperately needs hope, and not just the hope of finding the wished-for present under the tree in three weeks, but the deep hope and expectation that the world will be renewed, restored, and even remade by God. We're facing another variant of the coronavirus variant (who had learning to spell omicron on their 2021 bingo card?). We've faced yet again the horrific violence that perniciously clings to our culture in the school shooting at Oxford High School. (I could list a lot more things here, but that seems sufficient for one week).

You or I can do relatively little to change the spread of the omicron variant, and the complex of factors leading to gun violence in (and out of) our schools is equally complex. It's hard to figure out what to do.

But, hope is not first about what we should do. Hope is first about what we let the evil in the world do to us. Hope in the Lord keeps the bad in our world from stealing our joy, shredding our peace, and lessening our love. In other words, hope keeps us the sort of people who can change the broken world.

Hope happens in times like these; and hope makes possible God's new work here and now, and then forevermore.

In Christ,

Fr. Andrew