The Promise of Hope

The Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel – Isaiah 7:14

This Sunday begins the Advent season. Advent is the period leading up to the celebration of the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. For us, it is a time of preparation for the birth of the Christ, represented by the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

As we observe Advent this year, we will be utilizing the qualities of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love which are traditional in Christianity. Our children will also be observing Advent by exploring these concepts. In many traditional Christian churches these are celebrated as the virtues that Jesus brings to us, but we honor them as attitudes of mind and heart and states of consciousness. They are states we can embrace during Advent to open ourselves more fully to the birth of the awareness of the indwelling Christ.

This week, we begin with Hope. One definition of ‘hope’ is: A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.

As I meditated on this definition, I activated my power of Imagination, and I imaged myself as a Jew in Ancient Israel. The following is what came to me.

I have heard the reading of the Scripture at temple since I was a boy. Today, I am especially remembering the words of the prophet Isaiah who foretold of the birth of a child born of a virgin and of the house of David who would be called Immanuel; the promised and long-awaited Messiah. This Scripture always fills me with hope, for I am one of a people who have been persecuted and enslaved by invading empires for centuries. I am one of a nation who longs for peace, equality and freedom. I am hopeful that the Messiah will soon come to deliver us from our bondage and return us to our place of honor and prosperity. I have lived with this desire, as has my father and his father before him. We are a people of hope. We live in expectation that the prophecy will be fulfilled. And, still we wait.

This is the essence of the attitude of mind and heart we call ‘Hope.’

Hope begins with a promise of a desire yet to be fulfilled. In the case of my imagined self, it is the desire for freedom from bondage and to enjoy peace and equality. That is a desire we all share. We all want to experience freedom. We all want peace. We all want equality. We all want to be valued simply because we are.

Unlike my imagined self or many who still await the coming of a savior to deliver them from bondage, we in Unity know that our freedom is not dependent upon the birth of a man or the coming of a long-awaited deliverer. Our freedom from enslavement, the bondage of our own limited thinking and beliefs, comes from the birth of the Christ, the one true light of God, in our consciousness.  We can invite the birth, or awakening, of the indwelling Christ in every moment.

I am reminded of an analogy that Eckhart Tolle uses in The Power of Now when speaking about the power of our presence. He says that we should approach every moment with the same attention as a cat watching a mouse hole waiting for the mouse to emerge. I compare that image to the anticipation we feel as we embrace the attitude of ‘hope.’

Hope is living with eager expectancy of the discovery of the Christ born in us every moment, and the acceptance of the Christ expressing in each person we meet. The birth, or awakening, of the Christ in our hearts and minds is our deliverance from the bondage of the limited self and our belief in our separation from God and from each other. From that perspective, the Christ is our savior, the Christ revealed as us.

This week, as we begin Advent, we embrace ‘Hope’ as our attitude of mind and heart as we honor our desire for freedom and live with the expectancy of the freeing power of the indwelling Christ born as us in every moment.

Join us on Sunday at 10:00 as we explore together the power of a mind and heart filled with Hope.