“The Power of Hope” – First Sunday of Advent
Treasured Artifacts
- In my family, there are important relics of days gone by that are venerated.
- There’s an old plastic Santa head that came from my grandmother Bryant’s house. It’s arrival on my mom’s mantle is the first indication of the Christmas season
- There’s Gently, an old stuffed animal of mine that I created a shrine for out of an old Bass Shoe box
- And then there’s the tape
- A VHS tape, believe it or not
- Tarheels 1982 victory over the Georgetown Hoyas
- Watching that always gave us hope
- When the Tarheels would blow another shot, we’d watch that, remember the glory days of Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins and James Worthy.
- Hallmark Movies
- I confess a fascination for them
- They’re comforting, you know there will be a happy ending waiting for you at the conclusion
- Open ended things give our fears a chance to run wild.
- Scrooged Movie
- Promo for their Christmas special
- Word War
- Epidemics
- Crime
- YOU MUST WATCH THIS SHOW
- Fears are employed to manipulate us
- Hope is the antidote to fear
- Promo for their Christmas special
- Scrooged Movie
When we Most Thirst for Hope
When things seem hopeless
- For most people, things right now aren’t where we’d like them to be.
- COVID
- Orwellian world in which privacy a thing of the past
- Civility is breaking down
- A few years back, a gun man walked into a nightclub and shot fellow Americans
- We argued about gun rights, gay rights, faith rights, you name it.
- Didn’t grieve.
- Ask most anyone about their hope for America right now.
- Most are a little dubious in ways that haven’t been evident in my memory ever before
- The Younger the generation the greater the worry
- They’re going to be here
- But in their fear, younger generations are turning to
- Escapism
- Sexual Immorality
- Drugs
- Cheating
- The Church
- More “nones” than any time ever before
- Spiritual but not religious
- But oftentimes what that spirituality boils down to is little more than whatever makes me happy, I do. Whatever brings me grief, I avoid
- That’s not being spiritual, it’s being selfish
- We need hope now more than ever but, with the world’s hope, we don’t have very much hope for things improving at all
- But oftentimes what that spirituality boils down to is little more than whatever makes me happy, I do. Whatever brings me grief, I avoid
- We argued about gun rights, gay rights, faith rights, you name it.
- A few years back, a gun man walked into a nightclub and shot fellow Americans
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