A THRILL OF HOPE
“A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.”
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.”
I remember the advent service that brought those words home to my heart as though it were yesterday. The lights had been set low. I was exhausted with pre-Christmas to-do lists. It was oh so cold outside. The promise of Christmas seemed encapsulated in that mid-carol line of verse. The world did indeed feel weary, and I was indeed ready to rejoice. But first, I had to anticipate the season of light from within a season of darkness.
Advent is the liturgical season that spans the four weeks preceding Christmas. Each week, congregations gather to read out scripture and light candles that signify the virtues that the Christ Child to come would give us: Hope, Love, Joy and Peace.
Some traditions hold to a more narrative interpretation of what each candle represents: Expectation, hope, joy, and purity. But in all traditions, the candle that is lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day is seen to represent the Christ Child - Jesus, the Light of the World, come down into a world oh so dark.
In reflecting on my childhood, I don’t remember much connected to the season of Advent. Most likely the big Christmas pageants we held each year or the centrality of the Christmas story overshadowed the season of holy hush or anticipation in my memory.
I’m not sure when I began to prefer the waiting of Advent to the thrill of Christmas, but in recent years I’ve likened the approach to the growing of a holy hush within me. In a world marked by splash, immediacy, and brashness, the liturgical season of anticipation, of waiting for the promise of the Christ child, enlarges a holy quiet place within which to dwell.
Last year, the beginning of Advent brought with it an unexpected season of pain within my church that I have begun to term “the deep sad.” At a time when we should have been gathering together to reflect on hope, love, joy, and peace, we were instead picking up the pieces of something we had loved together. Instead of being oriented towards hope and promise, we experienced discouragement and sorrow. We found ourselves in a season of shifting - even ending - rather than anticipation.
Church was no longer what I had known it to be. It was all I could do to keep myself showing up for Advent services being hosted in the home of a friend. To this day, the actual content of the services remains a little foggy. I think we said liturgies together. I think we sang carols. I’m sure we prayed.
Here’s what I do remember with perfect clarity - the candles. First one for hope, then one for love. Then joy, then peace, and as we lit the candles that the Christian church lights to mark the weeks preceding the birth of the Christ Child, I asked for the gifts of Advent to be returned to me in the small hushed silence of that home-turned-church.
And so this year, as we return to the season of Advent, I find myself leaning into the anticipation of the season.
“A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.”
First hope, then love, then joy, then peace - return to us we pray. As we light the candles we remember the embodiment of all these gifts - the Christ Child. Emmanuel. God with us.
