{"id":7074910,"date":"2026-10-03T23:10:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T23:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7074910"},"modified":"2026-10-03T23:10:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T23:10:18","slug":"embracing-hope-in-advents-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7074910","title":{"rendered":"Embracing Hope in Advent&#8217;s Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-ast-blocks-layout=\"true\" itemprop=\"text\">\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A painful honesty in Advent<\/h4>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cO come, O come, Emmanuel\u201d; \u201cCome, Thou Long-Expected Jesus\u201d; \u201cLo, He Comes with Clouds Descending.\u201d<\/em> Even the traditional hymns of this season convey a sense of hopeful longing in Advent. It is a season that begins in the dark and recognises that though Christ has come, his work remains unfinished.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">Advent acknowledges our world\u2019s brokenness and tragedy <em>but<\/em> <em>still<\/em> has hope for God\u2019s future.\u00a0There is something honest about the season of Advent. Amid the literal darkness of winter, the Christian Church still hopes. It also hopes amid the metaphorical darkness of the bad news that fills our media. Not because of something we are, or can achieve, but because of who God is and what God can do.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Letters from Prison<\/h4>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor executed by the Nazis, wrote a famous letter in 1943 from prison:<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify is-style-info wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cLife in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent;<\/em> <em>one waits, hopes, and does this, that, or the other\u2014things that are of no real consequence\u2014the door is shut, and can be opened only from the outside.\u201d <\/em><strong>(Letters from Prison, 21<sup>st<\/sup> Nov, 1943)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">And what about the darkness within? Our personal griefs and wounds? Many don\u2019t feel that this is, <em>\u201cthe most wonderful time of the year.\u201d<\/em> \u00a0When I was a parish priest, many people told me how hard the Christmas holidays were for them. Some stayed away from church because it made them too sad. It is hard to be of good cheer when darkness has overtaken your life. And then there are all the ways we have let ourselves and others down. We have not done well at being family, friends, and neighbours. We have also fallen short at being the Church.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">It is into this darkness, without and within, that God\u2019s Word comes. The Church saw in Jesus the inauguration of the long-expected Kingdom of God. But they looked around at their world, as we do with ours. They saw that this kingdom, though begun by Jesus, was not finished. The lion didn\u2019t dwell with the lamb. The weapons of war had not been beaten into ploughshares. There was still injustice and war. The rich oppressed the poor, and the strong abused the weak. But still, they believed in the Word of God, and they yearned for the fulfilment of the prophecies. And they came to believe that they lived <em>\u201cbetween the times,\u201d<\/em> between the first and the second coming of Christ, when God would bring all to completion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">We still pray, <em>\u201cThy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.\u201d <\/em>And we strive for it. To bridge the gap between our current dark broken world and the Kingdom of God. But it is not something we can make happen. Ultimately, only God can. As Bonhoeffer wrote:<\/p>\n<p class=\"is-style-info wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201c\u2026the door is shut, and can be opened only from the outside.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Watch and Wait<\/h4>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">And so, we start the Church\u2019s worshipping year in Advent with the phrase, <em>\u201cwatch and wait.\u201d<\/em> \u00a0Echoing the words of Bonhoeffer, we sit like prisoners, looking at the prison door. And like prisoners, we may be fearful about the future. There is fear in the air now. Fear of violence. Fear for our democracy. Fear for the natural world. Fear of the Other who is not like us. Fear of the unknown. The message of Advent is we can face fear with hope. Hope in the One who came into our world as a newborn child. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, as the Nicene Creed says. Dare we believe it? Or do our fears overwhelm us too much in hard times? That is the honest question of Advent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">Advent then, is a season that begins in the dark with questions and longings. But it moves toward the light with hope sustained by the imagination of the human spirit. This should not be underestimated. Charles Dickens, in his novel <strong>Hard Times (1854)<\/strong>, explored the significance of the human imagination. He also examined the consequences of stifling it. Like Bonhoeffer, we watch and we wait and we look at the door, that is true. But we are strengthened in spirit as we are beckoned in our imagination by heavenly voices beyond the door, singing:<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify is-style-info wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cDo not be afraid.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">This is the song of the Angels and a foretaste of the message of the Risen Christ.<\/p>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A painful honesty in Advent \u201cO come, O come, Emmanuel\u201d; \u201cCome, Thou Long-Expected Jesus\u201d; \u201cLo, He Comes with Clouds Descending.\u201d Even the traditional hymns of this season convey a sense of hopeful longing in Advent. It is a season that begins in the dark and recognises that though Christ has come, his work remains unfinished. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7074911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135634,118099,235548,105797,235549,103597,101269,96660,182,162985,104443,112423],"tags":[235550,4752,11469,5202],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7074910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advent","category-angels","category-bonhoeffer","category-christianity","category-dickens","category-fear","category-hope","category-imagination","category-politics","category-singing","category-spirituality","category-theology","tag-advents","tag-darkness","tag-embracing","tag-hope"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Embracing Hope in Advent&#039;s Darkness - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7074910\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Embracing Hope in Advent&#039;s Darkness - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A painful honesty in Advent \u201cO come, O come, Emmanuel\u201d; \u201cCome, Thou Long-Expected Jesus\u201d; \u201cLo, He Comes with Clouds Descending.\u201d Even the traditional hymns of this season convey a sense of hopeful longing in Advent. 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