By Kristen Mudrack

Advent is a season of waiting.  A season of expectant waiting.  Though many church traditions have different meanings of the candles surrounding the advent wreath, the one I’ve chosen to focus on this year is hope, joy, love, and peace. 

Hope is hard. 

Hope can take you to the highest mountain, and when it is dashed, can bring you down to the lowest valley.  Climbing back up the mountain with hope again can be even harder.  Along the way, you find people who have been blessed with the very thing you’ve been hoping for.  And sometimes, that makes it even harder to keep climbing.  To keep hoping. 

Maybe you’re doing everything right.  Maybe you’re doing everything you can to make this hope come true.  You’re trusting God to bring about His will.  You’ve got faith.  But it’s not enough. 

You can do everything right.  You can try your hardest.  You can have faith that can move mountains.  But sometimes, the thing you hope for is still unrealized.  Still not the way you expected it to be. 

Sometimes God answers our prayers and hopes and expectations with the word no.  Not everything we hope for will come true, even if it’s something good.  And that’s when hope is really, really hard. 

So what do you do when the thing you’ve been hoping for is elusive?  What do you do when you can’t seem to climb back up the mountain again to hope? 

Let someone else carry you.  Let them hope with you and for you. 

Pour out your heart to your heavenly father, and ask Him to change your hope.  To align your hope with His will.  His good, pleasing, and perfect will. 

Your hope may not turn out the way you expected.  It may not be what you wanted.  But if you are willing to let God use you, let Him change you, mold you, and shape you, He will place in your heart a hope for His will.  He will show you that the things He has in store for you are better than you ever could have imagined.  That hoping in Him is really the only way to live abundantly and live life to the fullest. 

In this advent season, may you hope expectantly, with joy, and with thanksgiving.