Thought for the week: Advent 1 - Hope

There is a park in Plymouth with a rather unusual tree in it. Growing out of the ground is the stump of an old tree – it’s at least a metre wide. Many years ago, the tree was cut down and only the stump was left. But somehow, a new fir tree started to grow from it. So now, each year at Christmas nearby residents decorate the tree and have a little celebration together around it. This particular tree that was cut down has become a quite unexpected source of hope as a new one has sprung up from it.

In Jeremiah, we hear of God causing ‘a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety’. The ‘righteous Branch’ that is to come is Jesus.

As we start Advent, we look back and look forward. We look back and remember all those who waited in hopeful anticipation for the Messiah who would come and save them. Many, like Jeremiah, never lived to see the Messiah. And yet they remained hopeful.

We look back and remember Jesus’ birth over two thousand years ago and how a tiny baby was born in less than ideal circumstances, whose parents then fled with him to Egypt to escape a terrible fate. Yet, among all this, the hope spoken of by Jeremiah became a reality.

But we also look forward. We look forward in hope to when Jesus will come again and all things will be restored and renewed, when all crying and pain will cease, when all people will come together to worship the Lord.

What does that mean in the place and time we find ourselves, between the past and future. Here we also find hope.

Just like the fir tree that grew from the stump of the old, dead tree, there are signs of hope all around us – in the ways that we see God at work in our own lives, in the lives of people we know, and in the lives of people we have never met. These might be big or small. What signs of hope have you seen recently?