Advent 2025 officially begins on Sunday. Over the following four weeks, Christians often spend time in reflection on the various themes of this church season.
If Advent is new to you, or you would like a reminder of what it is and why Christians celebrate it, check out some details in this PDF.
For many denominations, the traditional four themes of the four weeks of Advent are hope, peace, joy and love, in that order. That would make the first week’s theme hope.
Hope is a word whose force and meaning has been a bit diluted over time.
Our verb hope comes from the Old English word hopian, which means "to have the theological virtue of Hope” or “to hope for (salvation, mercy), trust in (God's word)." In its earliest English usage—during what some would call the Dark Ages—hope was fully connected to an assurance of God’s faithfulness.
Our more modern sense of hope as wishing for something emerged some years later. Using the word hope to mean “to wish for something” or “to desire something” didn’t occur until the early 13th century, according to etymonline.com. (A favorite word-nerd source of mine for all things related to words and their histories.)
Prior to the 13th century, speakers of Old English understood hope in its Biblical sense. We moderns should dial in on this ancient understanding. Biblical hope is full of assurance because it is founded in something solid — the nature and character of our loving God. Hope is found in the salvation offered by Jesus, which brings us new and eternal life.
Sometimes our world feels like the ground is shifting under our feet. Our circumstances might not seem secure. If you are in Christ, you have a firm foundation. You have hope.
My prayer for you today is that whatever you face, you will be able to have hope.
Romans 15:13 is a favorite verse on this theme:
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”
I want to abound in hope! Don't you?!?
What is precious to me about this verse is that God is the one doing the heavy lifting… for those who know Christ, the Holy Spirit is holding the hope for us — we don’t have to hold on to hope in our own strength. That is very good news indeed.
As this next week, the first week of Advent, unfolds maybe slip away with God and spend some time meditating on hope. That would be a perfect Sunday afternoon thing to do to kick off this annual season.
A beautiful passage often connected to the first week of Advent in many Christian traditions is found in Isaiah 2. Verses 1-5 are poetically evocative of the hope of our eternal future in Christ. I encourage you to read and meditate on this hopeful vision.
Here, too, is a prayer taken from Bobby’ Gross’s book Living the Christian Year. May this prayer be something you use to invite Jesus to increase your hope in this first week of Advent:
“You, O Lord, have promised to come and make all things new, to dwell among us as our God and embrace us as your people, to wipe every tear from our eyes, and remove from us all pain, so that we may live forever in peace and security — O Lord Jesus, come!”
If you'd like a few tools and reminders to help you celebrate each of the four weeks of Advent this year, I have a little gift package of printable declarations and verses plus a phone wallpaper for each of the four weeks of Advent. You can request your copy of it here.
