A former colleague confided recently: I feel as though I’m at a tipping point – I’ve lost my faith.  All these years of prayers for peace, for the world to be a better place and for what?  All I see is a world that is worse than ever.  Even the Pope’s prayers for peace are unanswered.  It just all feels so hopeless.  A few days later, I noticed a woman sitting in her car sobbing, her head slumped on the steering wheel.  Then another car drove up, parked and two small children got out to farewell cries of ‘love you’.  The woman emerged from her car, opened the back car doors and the children climbed in.  And then I realised what was happening – it was the handover of children by their separated parents navigating their custody arrangements. 

These two life moments were powerful reminders to me of the struggle of life.  Those despairing times when we think joy will never creep into our bones again.  The overwhelming sense that the world is spiralling with too much suffering afflicting our fellow humans.  Perhaps some of us coming to the end of year that held too many sadness’s bringing too many wondering, wandering, painful, restless nights.  Perhaps we have a creeping of our inadequacy in the face of the distress of the world.  It is no wonder that our spirits are drooping. 

And we are deep in Advent.  This holy space of waiting and longing.  Of the lighting of candles with the hope that they will shine bright in the darkness of the world – and for some of us, the darkness of our lives.  A time of carols, Christmas trees and preparation.  Advent brings a particularly urgent task this year, perhaps, to re-ignite in us a spirit of hope.  Because the world does feel, as Thomas Merton identified in one of his poems, as though it is a ‘demented inn’. 

We have an innate sense of the importance of hope for our wellbeing.  In the psychological literature hope is defined in various ways: as a strength of character, an emotion, part of what helps us achieve our goals, cope with loss, illness, and other significant stresses.  In the world of faith, hope is also described as an eschatological virtue.  Eschatological in the sense that hopeful spirits look toward God making all things new.  It carries an enduring sense that people will be raised to everlasting life with God, that pain and suffering will end.  A profound belief that there will be justice. 

Faith and hope are intrinsically linked, I think.  The imagination of faith is formed by the stories of our ancestors, the picture words of poets, the creativity of artists and the imagination of dreamers.  It’s the feather that perches in every soul, singing, as Emily Dickinson so beautifully writes, ‘the tune without the words, and never stops at all.’  Imagine, hope as our constant companion!  Even when we have our heads slumped on the steering wheel. 

During Advent we hear the whisper of hope in the echoes of the longings of the ancient peoples.  The readings from Isaiah remind us that our ancestors in faith shared the ups and downs of their lives with the God of all kindness.  They knew that when they called on God to forgive that forgiveness would be offered them.  We may strain to hear their message, but our ancestors in faith can uphold us in our own journey – because God was their constant companion and responded to their cries.  And John!  How could we forget the presence of John the Baptist in our Advent journey this year.  Who could imagine the world wilderness from which he emerged proclaiming his message.  These stories are part of the ‘threads of hope’ as Pope Francis refers to them, uniting our journey with the journeys of all the peoples of faith who have gone before us. 

We can become worn down by the cares of life. And this, this is where we need to lean into our imaginative capacity – our heartfelt intuition that we are able to connect with God as revealed to us through story, memory and ritual.  This imagination enables us to ‘see’ the presence of God in the world – in beauty, people, the events of our lives.  This is our Advent and Christmas world – a world of angels and stars, shepherds and travellers.  A world that is blessed with the birth anew of the Emmanuel – God-with-us.  The presence of God bringing peace and blessing throughout the ages.  

When we gaze at the manger on Christmas night, may our weary hearts rest.  May we join with Christians throughout the world and celebrate what we know through the birth of the Emmanuel that nothing is impossible for God.  That this struggling world of ours is blessed because God has chosen to dwell with us.  This is the invitation to hope upon which faith is built. 

And perhaps the words of Thomas Merton might help with this:

Into this world, this demented inn
in which there is absolutely no room for him at all,
Christ comes uninvited.

But because he cannot be at home in it,
because he is out of place in it,
and yet he must be in it,
His place is with the others for whom
there is no room.

His place is with those who do not belong,
who are rejected by power, because
they are regarded as weak,
those who are discredited,
who are denied status of persons,
who are tortured, bombed and exterminated.

With those for whom there is no room,
Christ is present in this world. ~Thomas Merton

May the blessing of hope find its way into hearts this Christmas. 

By Cathy Jenkins

Published: 15 December 2023