When a veteran human rights activist is working with people fleeing their homes, including many Ukrainians this year, he never offers hope:
"[For] people in desperate circumstances, 'hope' is not the word….
You can't say to them; my prayers are with you and my hope is with you. I mean, they just want to know how to get out of the place." (hope and desperate circumstances)
Instead, when people were asked what IS needed, one reply was:
‘We want you to say 'I am fighting with you and alongside you to find a way for us to get out of this horror'.
These strong words are a reminder that as people of God, each year we start our Advent journey with the theme of hope. But this hope is not an empty platitude, a belief that God will sort of everything in the end. Our Advent journey starts with a recognition and penitence that our world is broken.
As Christmas approaches, we remember and celebrate that God-is-with-us, in the Hebrew language - “Emmanuel”. The hope that Christ gives is the strength to carry on, walking and fighting alongside those who know first-hand what the world’s brokenness looks like every single day.
So may God’s hope for the world which was enfleshed in the body of a child be borne again in us at this holy time and beyond, and may we be a true blessing to this beautiful, fragile and broken world.
Blessings
Ceri
