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I Will Hope in Him

December 12, 2022

Isaiah 8:16-9:1; 2 Peter 1:1-11; Luke 22:39-53 

And I will wait on the Lord, 
Who hides His face from the house of Jacob; 
And I will hope in Him. 

– Isaiah 8:17 

I don’t really think God hides His face from us. Do you? 

In fact, I think it is quite the opposite. It is we who all too often hide our faces from God. We have done so ever since Adam and Eve, ashamed of their disobedience, tried to hide themselves from His presence in the Garden of Eden. Or when Jonah tried to flee God because he did not want to go to the city of Nineveh as God had commanded.  He ended up in the belly of a whale at the bottom of the ocean – well-hidden indeed! Or when we, our own harshest critics, hide ourselves from God’s presence –convinced that if God sees who we really are, there is no way His grace would extend to us.

God, on the other hand, never stops reaching out to us. He is constantly revealing His face to us. A face full of limitless love, forgiveness and true desire for relationship. He made a covenant with Abraham and promised him descendants more numerous than the stars in the skies. He brought the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt and stuck with them in their stubbornness until they reached the Promised Land. And, as Jesus teaches in the parable of the Prodigal Son, God doesn’t just welcome us back when we stray, He runs to us – while we are still far off. At our slightest turning, God runs to us!  Imagine that! No, God does not hide His face from us in the least. 

And during this time of Advent, we remember God’s most incredible overture toward us. He became flesh and dwelt among us. All that love, all that desire to reconcile us to Him, the immense power of the universe – distilled in the sweet, vulnerable form of an infant on that fateful night. The face of God – radiating hope in a world so broken. For all people and for all time. The Reverend Philip Brooks so beautifully captured the transcendence of this moment in his hymn O Little Town of Bethlehem: 

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight 

I always thought of hope as forward-looking. And it most certainly is. But as we have been discovering in our Adult Faith Formation Advent reading and discussion of “Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope” by Joan Chittister, a robust, and mature hope that reassures and uplifts is firmly rooted in the past. Otherwise, it is just uneasy wishful thinking. 

So join me this Advent in claiming the gift of hope so wondrously given. Think upon all the examples of God’s outreach to us. Reflect on God’s limitless love and how He has displayed it over and over again. Be lifted up in this knowledge, and with full heart make Isaiah’s words your own – I will hope in Him. 

Gary Schweizer