Advent Reflections: Prophetic Hope

Each week in Advent has a particular theme attached to it, such as faith, hope, joy, or peace. Some traditions also associate these themes with characters and places in the Christmas story, such as the prophets or shepherds, Mary and Joseph, or the angels. Your Advent wreath may have these themes or characters engraved on it.

Although there isn’t a single, unified tradition (except that all traditions seem to place “joy” on the third week), I am going to follow the official “Breedlove Advent wreath” for the newsletter devotions over the next four weeks. We begin in week one, which on our wreath is labeled the “Prophet’s Candle, Symbolizing Hope.”

In the latter half of Isaiah, God frequently ridicules the false gods of the nations for not knowing the future while simultaneously reminding his own people that he does. As Is. 42:9 says (of future events), “before they spring forth I tell you of them.” It wasn’t that pagan deities didn’t have prophets. Prophecy and fortune-telling exist in many religions. But God’s point is clear—those gods and their prophets and fortune-tellers don’t know the future. They are blind, ignorant, and foolish.

For anyone who reads the Old Testament prophets or who listens to Jesus’ prophecies, it might seem strange that prophecy is associated in Advent with hope. After all, many of the prophecies focus on the judgment to come. The entire human race has been guilty of rejecting God and not worshiping him for millennia; we have been guilty of sinning against one another through violence and deceit since Cain and Abel; we have sinned sexually and through theft. We are guilty and deserve the judgment of God, and the prophets regularly remind us of this. Yet God’s descriptions of the future never end in judgment. Hope—restoration, redemption, healing—is always promised to those who will simply receive his word. God’s judgment has a limit, a boundary, an end; yet his mercy is infinite towards those who receive him.

We come face-to-face with the deepest hope of the prophets on Christmas morning—God in the flesh amongst his people. He did not come in judgment, but instead as “the sun of righteousness…with healing in its wings,” rising upon all those who fear the name of the Lord (Mal. 4:2). To fear the name of the Lord is the only prerequisite. We don’t need to be perfect, nor do we need to be guiltless. We don’t need to have our lives perfectly put together. Instead, everyone who approaches the Lord in reverence and humility will receive this healing. The message of the prophets is “darkness” and “calamity” (Is. 45:7) to those who reject it, but it is hope to those who receive it, a genuine and trustworthy hope that God will come near to us.

As you pray during this first week of Advent, remember the hope offered; remember God coming in the flesh with healing for you. Receive his word, and in humility worship him!

Steven+