Candle of hope, candle of promise

This first week of Advent we light each night the candle of hope, to remember that we have an enduring hope in Christ in the midst of a broken world. On this first Sunday we remember specifically how God made the world good and very good from the beginning; all things were beautiful in their design and blameless in their function, and there was peace on the earth between animal and animal, and love between human and human. Shame had not yet shown its face, nor fear either, and men walked with God in the world He had created.

Into that beauty came a whispering voice of temptation and deception, and hard on its heels came sin and all the consequences of sin that we know too well, so that Adam and Eve hid themselves from God, and blamed each other for their disobedience, and were exiled from the garden with a curse that covered all creation with them. But in the middle of the curse came a promise, for our God is a God whose love is greater than our sin:

"And I will put enmityBetween you and the woman,And between your seed and her Seed;He shall bruise your head,And you shall bruise His heel.
[...] And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living." - Gen. 3:15, 20

Even in the despair of their exile and in the midst of the terrible curses of pain and hardship and social disunion, Adam could place his hope in this promise of God, and trust that through Eve would come one bringing life to destroy the seed of evil and the bonds of death.

They hoped for Christ's coming; today we both remember that hope and its fulfillment in His Incarnation, and still continue to hope for His final coming and the ultimate fulfillment of His promises. The perfection and peace that creation once enjoyed is not merely a pleasant memory but is also a living hope, for it will be restored and delivered with us in Christ when our adoption is completed and our bodies are made new. This is why we hope so eagerly for His return, because only then will all the physical world He has made be renewed and redeemed as our spiritual selves are already, and His kingdom will be restored on the earth, and the groaning and sorrow of this earth will be replaced with joy. So we hope, and we persevere in our hope through all the doubts and troubles that accost us, considering His promises a worthy thing to hold on to.

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." - Rom. 8:18