From the UCC Network: Devotional for 12/01 "Hope"

Hope

Excerpt from Lamentations 3:22-33

“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because [God's] compassions fail not.  They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.  The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in [God]." (KJV)

Reflection by Kenneth L. Samuel 

Hope is not just a vision of the future.  Hope is also a mandate for the present.  Hope has a way of ordering our present in such a way that our present becomes congruent and consistent with our promise.

As a boy, I was always getting into trouble for one thing or another.  One hot summer afternoon, while being reprimanded for one of my many misdeeds by my mother, the telephone rang.  I was greatly relieved by the phone call, because I thought it would surely shift my mother’s attention away from her upbraiding of me.  To my dismay, however, my mother continued her tongue-lashing of me to the person on the phone.  After several humiliating moments, my mother abruptly handed me the telephone receiver.  On the line was my Aunt Naomi.  Aunt Naomi was renowned among me and my siblings for giving the best Christmas gifts.  At Christmas, she gave each of us no shirts, no ties, no pajamas and no books.  At Christmas time, Aunt Naomi gave each of us two crisp twenty dollar bills – to spend as we liked.  (This was quite a discretionary sum for a poor boy growing up in the sixties.)

On the phone, Aunt Naomi said to me simply and succinctly: “Boy, you better straighten up!  Christmas is coming.”  That’s all it took for me to get my act together.  The hope of what Christmas would bring me in December made me change my attitude and my behavior in August.

Hope is as real today as it will be in days to come.  Hope in God puts the present in perspective as we prepare ourselves to receive the promises ahead.  And do I need to inform you that God gives greater gifts than my Aunt Naomi?

Prayer

Lord God we thank you for the Hope that renews us day by day, and keeps us moving forward in faith.  Amen.

About the Author Kenneth L. Samuel is Pastor of Victory for the World Church, United Church of Christ, Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Daily Prayer

Most merciful God, as I walk the path of Advent, struggling to put my spirit right for the remembrance of your entry into my life as the Christ, I anxiously pray that I will not again be led astray from your path by the powers that beckon me this day.

For the temptation is great to skip right to Christmas – with its excitement and glitter and dazzling light displays – and to declare it good, thinking that this is what the approaching celebration is all about.

The enticement is ever there, to indulge myself in the religion of commercialism, humbling myself before the altar of endless buying, with bright paper and ribbons and bows, with the choirs of recorded holiday music blaring overhead.

The lights and trees and holiday festivities are a invocational call, threatening to draw me further from the very heart of Christmas itself; your incarnation into the messiness of the world, which offers the real gift - that ray of light that lights the real path to the joy and fulfillment which I seek.

And so I pray for your presence with me this new Advent; leading me just as you did those starry-eyed astronomers of old; waiting with me in the darkness of my life, as you waited with the shepherds who had watched for generations for the promise of your breaking into our world. Point me to that place where I may humble myself before your true desire for Creation, which comes not in fancy paper or bows, but as the gift of mercy, compassion and love for all peoples everywhere. The true salvation for all of us.

Fill my anxious soul with patience, as I expectantly await your in-breaking into my life; into your world, again.

Amen.

Rev Michael Kirchhoff

inspired by: Matthew 24:23-28