Waiting With Hope
The liturgical season of Advent takes us on a journey through hope, peace, joy and love — pointing us toward the birth of Christ as well as His final coming in victory. This journey invites us to wait expectantly for the Lord — to listen for His voice and remain steadfast in our conviction that He will do what He promised. In two of today’s lectionary readings, the prophets Isaiah (11:1-9) and Micah (4:6-13) relay God’s message to His people who are in a precarious position.
The chapters preceding the Isaiah passage lay out God’s charges against the people of Judah. Hebrew scholar Robert Alter describes them as “a scary picture of the day when God comes to exact retribution.”1 Intermingled with the accounts of Judah’s imminent punishment — one that will be meted out by the Assyrians — is the promise that a day will come when a repentant, faithful remnant will be restored and made new. Those who are looking to the immediate future in dread, knowing their personal and corporate sinfulness is in stark contrast to the holiness of God, are urged to look instead to a future when “the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious.”2
Isaiah then offers a glimpse of a future peaceful kingdom. Using poetic language, Isaiah envisages a kingdom that not only lacks violence, but is so infused with peace that it affects all of creation. The imagery of a kingdom in which wolves and lambs or lions and calves live together in perfect harmony amplifies the message of peace and introduces hope into Judah’s troubling circumstances, a hope that is rooted in the faithfulness of God who does what He promises.
Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, likewise foretells a future for the southern kingdom. He exhorts them to ignore the dire prognosis offered by others and to hold fast in hope because those detractors “do not know the thoughts of the Lord; they do not understand his plan.”3
Holding on to hope amidst difficult circumstances is a spiritual discipline. Hope requires taking a broader view — stepping back from the pressing challenges of the day to remember how God has acted in the past and what He has promised to do in the future.
Our hope is not built on wishful or magical thinking. It’s not even built on optimism. Instead, Christian hope is built on the character of God and the consistency of His presence. That means our eyes — actually our very lives — must be fixed on the certainty that God is who He says He is and that His everlasting love is not based on what we do. Instead, God’s love for us remains based on who He is. Therefore, with full confidence and joy, let us hope and wait for the Messiah.
1 Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Volume 2: Prophets (W.W. Norton & Company, 2019), 619.
2 Isaiah 22:2.
3 Micah 4:12.
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