Advent: Hope is Movement.

I have to confess, I didn’t tell you the whole story last week.

Yes, Katie and I did stand hopeless in the kitchen that day and yes, I had a dream that miraculously came true only a month later through the surprising generosity of a family of strangers. But there was something else. Something that, to be honest, may sound a little weird.

The morning’s after my dream of the cupboards overflowing I began pouring my heart out to God, honestly and vulnerably, in my prayer journal. The truth was, even though the dream felt clearly from him I was terrified to let myself hope again.

I’d been here before whether it was someone giving me a word that things were going to change or my own energy-mustering optimism for a day or two, and it had led to nothing. How could I suddenly allow myself to believe that this random dream would lead to change after years of heartbreak?

That’s the double edged sword of prophecy, in my opinion. The terror of hope. Prophecy confronts our being comfortable with giving up - on health, on a child, on a relationship or mental healing - and beckons us not to get used to darkness. Hope is dangerous, it’s risky, it completely exposes our vulnerabilities and dependance. And honestly, I really don’t like that feeling.

So, I journaled my fear, and my anger about it all to God each morning, “God, don’t play with my heart, don’t give me hope and not fulfil it. I’m desperate, I need you.” I told him I wanted to believe, that I longed to, but that I didn’t know how.

Then, the weird thing happened.

In the midst of all that honesty I felt God tell me to go home, fill a vase with water, stand on our front deck and pour it through the cracks between the panels, down into the soil and weeds beneath, and say a blessing over my home and life.

It sounded random, but my soul knew it was right. I got up immediately and went home. I did exactly as I’d felt led and blessed the home, “as this water pours through every crack and crevice of this deck, may the blessings and love of God pour into every crack and crevice of my need, decimating darkness, pouring in hope and life.”

Then, I waited. A few days later I received the email offering to supply our groceries, and our lives radically changed.

I learned something in that season and it’s this, hope is movement. I used to think of hope only as a feeling of optimism and future-happiness and so, in that season, it felt impossible. But through this little action, and the invitation to keep moving toward the promise of my dream from that morning on, I learned that actually, hope is living in to that which we long for.

It means living as though a new reality is incoming, one other than what we may see, feel or experience in the moment.

Hope is getting out of bed in the morning and acting like the day has something for you, even when your depression screams there isn’t. It’s being brave enough to say “maybe” when your circumstances say “no way”, whether it’s for work, for provision, for a relationship, a child, or a healed marriage.

Hope doesn’t alway need us to feel, it only requires we take baby steps day by day to act with an open heart, wholly relying on God.

For me, pouring that vase of water over my property was one act of hope. Another was recalling the dream to Katie and allowing ourselves to say ‘maybe’ and ‘what if’. It was allowing ourselves to see our future differently, as one full of possibility rather than continued trauma or pain and that made a real difference. I did all of it first without feeling. Joy followed the movement of hope.

That’s the essence of advent to me - the movement of hope. Magi arriving to bless a child in the hope he’ll become a king. John the Baptist preaching the gospel in the wilderness in the hope Messiah truly is coming. The disciples saying ‘yes’ to Jesus in the hope he would bring the kingdom.

That’s how we live now, between advents. Moving, inch by inch, regardless of how we feel at times, toward the consummation of all things. The hope that we will be done away with these broken bodies, that we’ll see our unborn children again, that we’ll live without sickness of body or mind, that there will be no fear or grief of war and injustice, that our desolate seasons will pass.

Advent is the right time to remember the old promises and prophecies of our lives. To stocktake our hope-movement. To commit to moving again toward those things, not because we can see them yet, but because God said they’d come. It’s a season to recall and remember and hold on, pondering them within us like Mary did Christ in her womb.

Friend, may you face the grit of life with a hope
that moves, in little ways, in courageous ways,
bringing God’s love into your dark places,
giving Christ his home.

All my love,
Strahan.

I’d love to hear what your little or large yesses are in this advent season in the comments below.