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Advent 1 2018 Hope

Advent is a period of waiting, a period of assurance, and a period of expectation. During Advent, we remember and join Israel’s desire and promise that God would come and redeem her, restore her to Himself as His people. For us, we recall and imagine the faithful coming of God to fulfill that promise and we remember His promise to the disciples to return yet again and gather us to Him. The four Sundays of Advent each have their own theme. This year we will use the themes of hope, peace, joy, and love for these reflections.
We know the story of Job and his quandary. He believes himself to be righteous and yet his world has literally been destroyed, except for his wife. Her advice to him is “curse God and die.” Job is miserable, sitting in ashes and covered with boils on top of everything and everyone he has lost. Seeing her husband suffer, her solution is to just go all the way and give God a reason to kill you – curse Him and get it over with. Job, his wife and Job’s friends believe that righteous folks are automatically blessed by God and the unrighteous bear suffering from His hand. This they presume is the way the world works.
He knows he is righteous and yet he is suffering. Job’s world all of a sudden doesn’t make sense and he has to work through this cognitive dissonance. His friends and his wife are no help because they have the same worldview. Despite Job’s confusion, he does not give up. He questions what is happening but he never sins. He has lived righteously and he continues to live righteously even when it looks to him that God isn’t playing by the rules. The story of Job is told in forty-two chapters. About halfway through it, in chapter 19, we read this:
“And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”
Despite what his worldview tells him; despite what he is hearing from his friends and his wife, Job hopes. This hope of his isn’t a wish though; it is much more. Job is convinced that he has a redeemer and that redeemer will come to his aid; to his vindication. Job knows through faith that this will happen. His faith and hope are based on what he believes he knows and has experienced before from his God. Despite his miserable condition, Job anticipates his own redemption which he will see with his own eyes. Job is waiting in expectation of his vindication and his world being set aright by his redeemer.
Hope, or trusting anticipation is Job’s stance in the story despite what has happened to him and his own understanding of how this all works. And Job is right, at least in his hope that his redemption will come. During Advent, we remember Israel’s anticipation of her redemption and we look forward to the consummation of all time when finally the whole people of God will be ultimately redeemed by God. Yes, like Job we see the world and it doesn’t seem right to us. And like Job we are asked to remain faithful through the losses, the setbacks, the hurt, and the harm we experience. We will be justified and called righteous because we have remained faithful to God as joint heirs with, and disciples of Christ.
This Advent, bring to mind this sort of anticipation, this sort of assurance that your God and Savior will finally redeem you forever and set the world right once again. 


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