Advent Week 1 - The Substance of Hope
- Anglican Chaplain ETF
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
We light that first Advent candle and say the word—Hope. But let me ask you something: What are we really talking about here? Because if we’re honest with each other, most of what we call hope is really just wishful thinking dressed up in religious language.
You know what I mean. We hope the diagnosis comes back better than expected. We hope the difficult conversation goes well. We hope next year brings some relief. And underneath all of it, there’s this quiet fear that maybe we’re fooling ourselves.
But biblical hope? That’s something different entirely.
Let me tell you about the prophets. These weren’t men removed from reality. Isaiah spoke to a nation facing annihilation. Jeremiah wept as Jerusalem burned. Ezekiel sat in the ruins of everything his people had known.
These men knew darkness intimately.
But listen to how Isaiah speaks: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.” Not “might see” or “let’s hope they see.” No—“have seen.” Present tense. Done. And he’s saying this while enemy armies surround the city.
That’s not optimism. That’s something else entirely.
Or consider Jeremiah. The city’s under siege. Babylon has them surrounded. And this man buys a field—real estate in a war zone. Can you imagine? His neighbors must have thought he’d lost
his mind. But Jeremiah understood something crucial: There’s a difference between wishing and hoping. Wishing says, “Wouldn’t it be nice if things worked out?” Hope says, “God has spoken, so it’s certain.”
This is the hope Advent invites us into—not some fragile optimism that collapses under pressure, but an anchor that holds when everything else is falling apart.
The writer of Hebrews gives us a powerful image—hope as an anchor for the soul. Anyone who’s been on a boat understands how an anchor works. The storm can rage. The waves can crash. But the boat stays because down below, where you can’t see it, that anchor has caught hold of something solid. Something the storm cannot touch.
That’s how biblical hope works. It’s not tied to your circumstances. It’s not dependent on how you’re feeling or whether you can see how this will resolve. It’s anchored in God himself—in his character, his promises, his proven faithfulness.
God isn’t asking you to hope in hope. He’s asking you to hope in him. When Scripture says, “God is not a man, that he should lie”—that’s not poetry. That’s bedrock truth. Every promise God has made, he has kept or will keep.
Think about Mary. A young woman receives an impossible announcement from an angel. Nothing about it makes sense. But her response? “Let it be to me according to your word.” She doesn’t understand the how. She can’t see the path. But she knows the one making the promise. And that’s enough.
John says it simply: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Isn’t that exactly what we need to hear when darkness feels overwhelming?
Here’s what the prophets were announcing—God himself would come as light into our darkness. Not sending help from a distance. Not offering wisdom from heaven. Coming in person. The Light would take on flesh and blood, be born in darkness, laid in a feeding trough because no one made room.
That’s what Advent celebrates. The Light arrived exactly as God promised. Shepherds in darkness suddenly surrounded by glory. A star piercing the night. God keeps his word. The Light came.
Every Advent candle we light proclaims it: What God promised, he did.
But we live in the tension—between Christ’s first coming and his second. Between promise given and promise fully realized. Jesus came, yes. But we’re still waiting for him to return and make all things new.
We’re not hoping that Christ might return. We’re trusting that he will because he said so. “I am coming soon,” he declared. Every promise already fulfilled guarantees every promise yet to come.
So we light candles in the darkness—not denying the darkness is real, but refusing to grant it finality. We grieve, but not as those without hope. We struggle, but not without certainty that the struggle has meaning and end. We wait with the expectation of those who have met the Promise-Keeper.
Maybe you’re entering this Advent season weary of hoping. Life has taught you that expectation is dangerous. That it’s safer to keep your guard up and protect your heart from disappointment.
I understand. But biblical hope isn’t wishful thinking. It’s not positive thinking or pretending everything’s fine. It’s confident expectation rooted in God’s character and his proven track record of keeping every promise.
The same God who spoke light into darkness at creation spoke his final Word in Christ. The same God who kept his promise to send a Savior will keep his promise to return and restore everything that’s broken.
As you light your Advent candles this season, let them remind you: Hope is not wishful thinking. It’s an anchor fixed in bedrock. The prophets spoke into absolute darkness with complete certainty, and the Light came exactly as promised.
He’s coming again. That’s our hope. That’s our anchor. That’s our confident expectation.
Come, Lord Jesus.
Pax,
The Rev’d Cn Stephen Linkous