Advent always starts with hope. The day that Advent begins rotates. The temperature varies from Advent to Advent, but this season of waiting and watching always starts with hope.
This year as we decorated our tree and trimmed our house with greens and lights, we were also chasing a toddler around. It made the whole process more exciting as we decorated and then she redecorated. This isn’t her first advent, but it is the first one she hasn’t mostly slept through. Maybe it’s something about her age or something about the coming of the birth of the light of the world, but our children this week have been asking about their births. It’s story that we’ve told each of them and a story they always want to hear again.
Our nine-year-old knows that the month before he was born, Columbia suffered a historic 1,000 year flood. He knows that it was hard for us to find clean water and that the hospital where he was born had to have clean water pumped in. Our five-year-old knows that just weeks after her first birthday party, the whole world shut down for a global pandemic. As we retold their stories, our nine-year-old asked, “What about her?” and pointed at his 16-month-old sister.
What about her? Our little hope. Her middle name bears the same name as the first Sunday of Advent. As we were naming her, we hoped that her birth and beginning year of life might not have a natural disaster or world-changing event. We hoped that the world our kids had experienced in their short lives might be mending and healing and things might be a bit more peaceful.
As I thought about his question, I realized that she had already experienced so much. In her sixteen months of life, there have been wars raging, another hurricane swept through our new city and new neighbor wreaking havoc that we still haven’t recovered from, and the list goes on. And still our little hope smiles, dances, and marvels at the lights on the Christmas tree.
Maybe that’s why we start with hope in Advent. Maybe this season the hope is not that the world will settle down, but that we will find peace in the good news that the light of the world will come again no matter how the world has changed since last Advent.