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Friends,
It’s official—we are now allowed to start singing Christmas music. In fact, if it was technologically feasible, I would fashion this email to be akin to a singing Hallmark card, startling you with the opening jingle of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” upon clicking it open. Because ready or not, here comes the first Sunday of Advent. During Advent’s reign, we ground ourselves in its thematic anchors: hope, peace, joy, and love. And though we sort these values to fit neatly into separate Sunday services, they remind me of a necklace that just won’t resign to its orderly original state; hope, peace, joy, and love are inextricably intertwined with one another. This Sunday, our task is to parse through hope.
From Star Wars scripts to political campaign slogans, hope’s role has been cast all throughout the theatres of our cultural experience. And yes, hope’s performances in popular culture have increased our attention to hope’s cameos in our lives. And yes, hope’s performances might have also diluted our understanding of the hope of Christmas. So I invite you to join me this Sunday as we revisit the value that asks for our endless understanding: hope. It is value beneath the others, derived from the others, and yet somehow in service to the others. To scratch the surface of our shared endeavor, we’ll root ourselves in this passage from Isaiah, a book that has everything to say about the scope of hope.
Looking forward to seeing you on Sunday!
With great hope,
Nikki
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