How Is Your Hope Holding Up?

As December begins, Holy Covenant steps into a month of Reflect & Celebrate with a simple, honest question: How are you… really? In this first week of Advent, we lean into HOPE — not the loud kind, but the steady kind that keeps showing up even when the headlines are heavy and our hearts feel tired.

The prophet Isaiah reminds us:

“Those who hope in the Holy One shall renew their strength.” (Isaiah 40:31)

All month long, we’ll be lifting up our Pastor and Consistory leaders as we ask how it is with your spirit, your hope, and your heart.

I might be the worst person to ask about hope, because I’m a pastor and pastors are expected to be full of hope. I mean, aren’t we the ones who are supposed to lead people toward more hopeful lives and a more hopeful world? The truth is, when something unexpected happens or a new circumstance pops up in my own life, my mind usually rushes straight to the worst-case scenario. I worry. The anxiety hormones kick in. I paint a bleak picture in my head, and I start mentally doomsday prepping.

And I don’t think that’s bad or wrong, I actually think it’s just human. And honestly, to me it’s a sign that I deeply care about whatever has stirred up those emotions or feelings in the first place.

I don’t tend to think about things like hope or faith as things that rise and fall depending on the circumstance. What I’ve come to understand is hope is created by doubt and things like doubt and fear start to show up because uncertainty feels present. Yet beneath all of that, what I know to be true is that God’s love is real, that things can be made better and will be made better, no matter the circumstances.

So, in a way, all there is…is hope.

For me, hope is the choice to step out of that fear, or at least loosen our grip on it, even if it’s just for a moment, and to recognize that whatever has us dreaming up worst-case scenarios or doomsday bunkers isn’t real. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist in a physical sense or isn’t causing us pain or hurt or grief, what I’m saying is that I believe God is repurposing it in a way we cannot yet see, which makes hope real.

There is so much in the world right now pulling at our heartstrings and that tempts us to just want to throw the remote at the TV. But what I think hope does, is it opens us to the awareness that God is still present in our lives. For me, hope isn’t something we have more or less of at times, I tend to believe it’s just something we learn to notice. And we notice it because God simply is.

-Pastor Chris