Hope and its beautiful cousins
I have been thinking about the differences in the ideas of faith and hope. Advent, our friend Blake reminded us last year, is a season that always begins in exile. We read the Old Testament prophets writing from inky darkness, their enemies terrifyingly close, centuries of disappointment collapsing downward in a crushing, overwhelming wave. Hopeless.
Even so, they write toward the only star in the sky they can see.
Advent is often described as a season of hope, but I wondered why it wasn’t thought of as a season of faith. Faith, after all, seems like the underpinning of all this about a Messiah born to save the world. All the things we believe. Hope, faith, belief–they’re all cousins, right?
