Hope - Penny Snowden

Hope is commonly used to mean a wish : its strength is the strength of the person's

desire. I hope I catch the bus ... I hope this lecture doesn’t go on too long...

But in the Bible hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised and its

strength is in his faithfulness. Therefore hope is an important theme in Advent. We

are confident in the birth of the Christ child and spend this time waiting and

preparing ourselves for this momentous event.

This has reminded me of a personal event which is now sixteen years ago. Where

does the time go? At that time my identical twin grandchildren were still in the

womb and we received the devastating news that one child would not survive and

then a bit later that the other one wouldn’t either. At that time so many people

prayed with me. For some time afterwards I was recognised as the one with the

twins that were prayed for.

When my daughter- in- law returned to see the consultant he was amazed and dumbfounded to discover not one but both twins were ‘viable’ (horrible word but

perhaps not in this context). The middle name of one of them is ‘Hope’.

Below is a wonderful poem on the theme of Advent which I hope you will treasure.

Advent Calendar

He will come like last leaf's fall.

One night when the November wind

has flayed the trees to bone, and earth

wakes choking on the mould,

the soft shroud's folding.

He will come like frost.

One morning when the shrinking earth

opens on mist, to find itself

arrested in the net

of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.

One evening when the bursting red

December sun draws up the sheet

and penny-masks its eye to yield

the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,

will come like crying in the night,

like blood, like breaking,

as the earth writhes to toss him free.

He will come like child.

Rowan Williams (The Poems of Rowan Williams, Perpetua Press 2002)