Wait patiently for the Lord your God

                             HOPE2025 – Hope the gift of life eternal - 

There are any number of powerful verses in Paul, verses that will no doubt appear to be shocking, to today’s world.  One of them is this one:

We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope (Rom. 5:3-4).

Here “endurance,” when it is coupled with hope, speaks of persevering in the face of even the harshest, most threatening of trials that come our way.  It is because we live in-Christ Jesus that we are never irreparably discouraged.  Never despairing, but rather persevering; never in a hurry to take over from God and to attempt to make our own light for our darkness.  As the psalmist reminds us: we wait patiently on the Lord, knowing God is already responding to us.

What then can we be doing for Hope 2025?

We can discover, quite literally, thousands of suggestions put forward for ways in which we can open ourselves up to the movement of God’s Holy Spirit and allow Hope to grow in our hearts and in our minds. They all speak of the need to be intentional, to act on God’s grace within us to make hope a reality, to allow that great gift of God to fill our hearts with the peace only the Almighty can offer.   Here are some of the most popular:

Prayer: Prayer is a source of hope that deepens a Christian's relationship with God and reminds them of his faithfulness. This can be done both on our own as well as with others as members of a prayer group or team. Hope encourages us to pray, and the product of prayer is hope

Participate in the Eucharist: The Eucharist is a reminder of Christ's sacrifice and the promise of eternal life.  We can commit to participating in at least one extra Eucharistic celebration during the week apart from Sunday. This sacrament was the mainstay of the early faith communities and celebrated in obedience to the command of Jesus to do this in memory of me.

Strengthen virtues: Developing virtues like patience, humility, and courage can help Christians become more resilient and trust in God's promises.  Do we even remember what thos Spirit driven are:

Read, memorize, study and pray Scripture: Saturating oneself in the Word of God can help cultivate hope, particularly if we are participating in this with others.

Count blessings: Counting blessings can help keep hope when it's waning. 

 Engage with those on the margins: Reaching out to God’s forgotten but needy children can help cultivate and share the gift of hope. 

Grow in the knowledge of our faith: This helps take us deeper into our lives with God.

And, forgiveness: being reconciled

One of the great revelations in the Scriptures is that in the death of Jesus on the cross, we have the forgiveness of sins.  Jesus achieved for us what the sacrifices of the Old Testament people of God could not – forgiveness. The Bible makes clear that forgiveness is important, and that God promises to forgive those who confess their sins to Him. Not only that, but the divine demand is also that as God forgives us, so we must forgive others.  Our own appearance before the heavenly throne will find us being forgiven to the same extent we forgive others.  The Bible is rich with guidance on the place of forgiveness in the life of a Christian.  Below are some favourites:

Matthew 6:14-15 … For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses…

Ephesians 4:32… Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you… 

Colossians 3:13… Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive…

Luke 6:37…   Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven…

Psalm 86:5…You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you… 

Psalm 103:12…  As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us…

The Bible also says that “unforgiveness” can lead to resentment, anger, and distance between people. It can also prevent the restoration of broken relationships.  Hope remains a gift and a calling. 

It is The Gift each one of us is called to make alive in the world of today.  A gift we are to share with others. 

We have the grace we need to carry out such a task. 

We have the mandate from God to do so. 

All that is needed now is for us to commit to it.

To allow Hope to guide us and to allow the Spirit of God to empower us to bring that light into the darkness in which others struggle, the epeople to whom God sends us.                      

HOPE2025 – Hope the gift of life eternal - 

There are any number of powerful verses in Paul, that will no doubt appear to be shocking, to today’s world.  One of them is this one: We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope (Rom. 5:3-4). Here “endurance,” when it is coupled with hope, speaks of persevering in the face of even the harshest, most threatening of trials that come our way.  It is because we live- in-Christ we are never irreparably discouraged.  Never despairing, but rather persevering; never in a hurry to take over from God and to attempt to make our own light for our darkness.  As the psalmist reminds us: we wait patiently on the Lord, knowing God is already responding to us.

What then can we be doing for Hope 2025?

We can discover, quite literally, thousands of suggestions put forward for ways in which we can open ourselves up to the movement of God’s Holy Spirit and allow Hope to grow in our hearts and our minds. They all speak of the need to be intentional, to act on God’s grace within us to make hope a reality, to allow that great gift of God to fill our hearts with the peace only the Almighty can offer.   Here are some of the most popular:

Prayer: Prayer is a source of hope that deepens a Christian's relationship with God and reminds them of his faithfulness. This can be done both on our own as well as with others as members of a prayer group or team.

Participate in the Eucharist: The Eucharist is a reminder of Christ's sacrifice and the promise of eternal life.  We can commit to participating in at least on extra Eucharistic celebration during the week apart from Sunday.

Read, memorize, study and pray Scripture: Saturating oneself in the Word of God can help cultivate hope, particularly if we are participating in this with others.

Count blessings: Counting blessings can help keep hope when it's waning. 

 Engage with those on the margins: Reaching out to God’s forgotten but needy children can help cultivate and share the gift of hope. 

Grow in the knowledge of our faith: This helps take us deeper into our lives with God.

Strengthen virtues: Developing virtues like patience, humility, and courage can help Christians become more resilient and trust in God's promises.  These virtues become the face of the Church in the world and while our faithfulness to them can bring people to Christ, few things tarnish the image of the Church more than our failures to live the virtues in our face-to-face meetings with others.

Acknowledging the power of the virtues

In Christianity, “virtue” is defined as the habitual and driving desire to do the good. The Spirit within us drives us to perform good acts and to give the best of ourselves, those inner graces poured into us by God at our baptisms. It is embedded in our being and influences the way we act and react to people and events around us. Our virtues are the good things we do that define us.

As Christians, our moral obligation is to cultivate and to live out the virtues with which we have been blessed, virtues passed down from one generation to another from apostolic times.  Not only that, we need to pass it on to our children and grandchildren. We are their role models, and they are our hope for a better world.

The traditions of virtuous living have been handed on unchanged from the time of Christ himself and we know they work, that they are effective in the daunting task of transforming the society from within.

1. Kindness

If there was ever a virtue that had been lost in the growth of rampant individualism over the last thirty or so years, it is the gift of kindness.  At every level of society, we find people in conflict, not just disagreeing, but in violent intolerance.  We see road rage, youth gangs, and ongoing court clashes with one party suing another. 

Politicians do not seem to understand the meaning of the word!   Anyone travelling on public transport will experience the incivility, the lack of manners, and the frequent disregard people have for “the other” in those crowded spaces. In an age where we can pick a fight with a stranger we have not even seen in person but found on the internet. When people are kind to us, it comes as something of a shock.  We tend to be kind only to those people we like and block those we hate. It has become easier for us to highlight the faults and failings of others, while not accepting our own.  We too easily evaluate people on the basis of their faults without even acknowledging the good things they’ve done.

“A man who is kind benefits himself, but a cruel man hurts himself,”  says Proverbs 11:17 and how true is that!  Being either a giver or receiver of kindness has an immediate impact on us, and releases some kind of good-feeling vibe encouraging us to be kind again. 

Indeed, kindness begets kindness. If we want to be treated with kindness, then it is reasonable to expect us to be kind to others. This is a virtue we live at home, implanting it into the minds and hearts of our children by example and in words.  They need to know that harassment, cruelty, marginalising others or acting as bullies can never be justified.

Kindness is something that requires us to make an effort.  It is an intentional virtue. We must choose to be virtuous.  Make it a priority. Thus, in every waking moment, choose to be kind. No matter who that person is, where they’re from, how they speak, or how they have treated us.  This is a world-transforming virtue.

2. Love

If there was ever a word that has been used and abused in our world today it is the word “love”.  We see it sullied daily on our televisions and in movies.  We can no longer be judged if we make the mistake of equating love with sex as that is the main message from all varieties of communication.  English uses the one word for a variety of different situations whereas the Bible has six!

Agape: Unconditional love, based on deep regard and appreciation

Philia: Affectionate, platonic love, or "brotherly love"

 Eros: Romantic love, or physical or sexual love

Storge: Love between family members, or a protective love that can withstand hardships

 Phileo: Friendship, fondness, affection, delight, and personal attachment

Philadelphia: Loving someone like a brother or sister, or fraternal affection

Paul even goes so far as to describe what love is when it is taken up in our daily living in 1 Corinthians 13… 4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Like the virtue of kindness, it is one of those divine graces (divine because we know from the Bible that God himself is love) that is life-changing and society-transforming.  It is the Christian’s secret weapon the manifestation of the movement of God among us and thus a binding obligation on all the baptised.

3. Honesty

In one of my favourite songs, Billy Joel lamented that “honesty” is such a lonely word. That is most likely because this virtue makes only rare appearances in the world today. Lies, falsehoods and deceptions are now expected and often the starting point in personality clashes. 

We use the concept of truth loosely, in that we are pressured to accept a variety of truths – my truth, your truth, their truth and each of these could be variations on the single reality.  How can something as absolute as “truth” be subdivided into such a broad range of possibilities?  If truth is so flexible, how can people be honest?

Sadly, cheating has become acceptable, built into the way we respond to people and situations.  It is hard to be honest.  If we were honest (!!) almost everyone has cheated someone at some point, in one way or another, even if this dishonesty is “little white lies”.  Sadly, we are no longer shocked when we find out someone has lied to us.  This is why random acts of honesty – whistle-blowers for example - become headlines. That is why we offer rewards to people who return things to their rightful owners.

While this virtue is not as radically world-changing as the previous two virtues, it provides a sure foundation for relationships and is the lubricant that keeps our world going smoothly.   It is because Jesus is Truth incarnate that we have hope and it is in living in his Truth that we find life in even the most brutal moments.

4. Charity

In an age where we sometimes wonder where kindness has gone, the opportunity is there now for Christians to reach out to a needy world.  A measure of the importance of kindness for Christians is the way it is used in the Bible, particularly the New Testament.  

The Greek word used for kindness is ‘ agape’  appearing in the New Testament over 312 times (depending on the Bible used).  It covers a range of emotions.  In the dictionary, agape love is the highest form of Christian love.  It is love in action, a love that shows empathy; It is always “other” directed and desires only the best for those to whom it is directed. It manifests our Christian faith, putting flesh onto it.  It is to flow out into the lives of all people, men and women without exception, saints and sinners alike.  It is an inexhaustible virtue, one making demands on every aspect of our lives. Later Christian writers used the word to refer to Christian love or charity, and even God himself. 

Sadly, we tend to be kind more often to those people we like and but when people we do not like come into our sights, kindness flees.  This virtue encourages the Christian to initiate loving contact with another and to seek out opportunities to spread agape generously.  

Again, we can go to the Bible, in this case, Proverbs 11:17… A man who is kind benefits himself, but a cruel man hurts himself.”  From experience, we know how kindness begets kindness. If you want to be treated with kindness, then be kind to others. Nothing good comes out of cruelty.  Thus, in every waking moment, we need to choose kindness. No matter who that person is, where they’re from, or how they have treated you.

5. Contentment -serenity, satisfaction, happy

Is contentment a virtue or what happens in a person’s life when we live out all of the other virtues?  They experience contentment no matter what comes their way. The signs are obvious because they can live in the moment, deal with challenges and find time to enjoy blessings sent to them by God.  They are people who, while planning for the future are in no hurry to get there, finding time to smell the roses as they make their way through life.  They love life – as it is, rather than prioritising the search for ways in which it can be better.   

They live in God, in the presence of God and find contentment in that, in knowing their God is with them and that nothing can separate them from the Risen Christ, a Christ whose yoke is easy and their burden light.  

While they know evil exists in the world, they prefer to celebrate good rather than become preoccupied with evil and choose the way of righteousness rather than the darkness of a life of sin.  Theirs is a life of hope because their God is with them and that is the root of their contentment.  They are open-minded and accepting, not judgemental and closed to new ideas which means they banish bitterness and dwell on what is wrong, always searching for a way forward, a way to heal, to forgive and to renew.  They are content because of all of these other realities on which they build their lives.  With less stress, of course, comes better health outcomes and a deeper sense of well-being. 

We do not always see a great deal of this virtue in today’s sophisticated world.  We are constantly reminded of new possibilities, things we do not have that others have.  It is there on the internet, on our television screens, in magazines and on advertising signs that line our city streets. 

No matter how much we have, we are told, there is always more available.  Is that not half the message from Facebook posts?  “Look at my perfect life!  Aren’t you jealous of what I have?” That means nothing to the contented person who may have little in the way of possessions but is satisfied with living in the hand of God.

The key to happiness is contentment. And that is what we need to teach the young people of today. They need to learn to appreciate what they have and make the most out of it. Only then can they see what really matters most in life.

6. Humility

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

Humility is a tough virtue, difficult to attain and even harder to maintain and build a life on. Even offering a definition is a challenge. I cannot wear my humility like a badge or an award because any definition will reflect on the way I see others and deal with them.  Humility is not really about how I live, but the way I raise others up.   

The opposite of humility is not pride.  Paul writes of how it is more about thinking of others, of putting others first and considering less about ourselves…

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others… Philippians 2:3-4

The equation should be simple: If I am about me, I am selfish. If I am about you, I am humble. If we are to be fully alive and attuned to ourselves as God’s children, faithful Christians must prioritise the will of God and our striving to imitate Christ.  It comes with an unimaginable sense of serenity.  Here is why the way of humility is also the way of the Cross. 

7. Conscientiousness

Hebrews 11:1 speaks of Christian faithfulness as being wholly committed following God’s will for us.  It requires that we put our imitation of Christ before all else, living comfortably and conscientiously under his law of love, in pursuit of the holiness demanded of us.  This way of living demands a sense of loyalty to God’s covenant, with a commitment to have a kind of positive scrupulousness in our obedience.   Like St Paul and those early apostles, we are scrupulous in doing the will of God, serving him with a holy zeal. Life for the conscientious person has Truth as its foundation.     

8. Patience

Hebrew is a wonderful language and very expressive in the way it uses words.  In the Old Testament, the word for patience is really a combination of two words - ‘erekh ‘appayim meaning “long” and “nostrils.”  A patient person is “long-nosed”!  In what way is that patience, you might ask? Look at angry people.  They often breathe quickly and heavily. By contrast, when they are patient, people breathe more deeply and remain calm.

The New Testament was written in Greek, and the primary New Testament word for patience is makrothymia. As it is with the Hebrew, the Greek word is also composed of two words: makros (“long”) and thumos (“soul, heart”). So, to be patient is to be “long-souled,” in the sense of having the endurance to stay calm and keep doing what you’re supposed to do especially when tempted to get frustrated and give up.

Patience comes from living in the shelter of God, and rather than taking over control of life, we comfortably hand our destiny over to the Lord.  We find contentment in humbling ourselves, purging our lives of all that flows from self-interest and selfishness.  That means we live according to God’s plans, God’s timetable, and that requires of us a commitment to metanoia, repentance, a turning around and walking in the Way of Christ. 

Patience then is a long-term struggle.  As we journey along on our pilgrimage, we can endure all because we have a long-term perspective on life, seeing not the present time but our future destiny with God.  This is why Job was a long-suffering man of God.  The realities of the present do not hide the reality of what is to come.

The house my wife and I built here in Linton is called anathoth.  It was one of the cities of refuge, in the tribe of Benjamin ( Joshua 21:18   but is particularly notable as the birthplace and usual residence of Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 1:1 ; 11:21-23 ; 29:27 ; 32:7-9 ). It suffered greatly from the army of Sennacherib, and only 128 men returned to it from the Exile ( Nehemiah 7:27 ; Ezra 2:23 ). It lay about 3 miles north of Jerusalem. It has been identified with the small and poor village of 'Anata, containing about 100 inhabitants.

We chose that name because just prior to the Babylonian exile, Jeremiah was told to go and purchase a plot of land in anathoth.  It was a pledge for the future, a sign of faith in God.  In doing this Jeremiah was proclaiming that there was life beyond the exile.  The people of God would one day return from exile and once more take their place in the works of God.   In those moments of darkness in exile, they knew that land was waiting for them.  God would bring them home when their punishment for sin was complete. That is a saga of patience. 

And, forgiveness: being reconciled

One of the great revelations in the Scriptures is that in the death of Jesus on the cross, we have the forgiveness of sins.  Jesus achieved for us what the sacrifices of the Old Testament people of God could not – forgiveness. The Bible makes clear that forgiveness is important, and that God promises to forgive those who confess their sins to Him. Not only that, but the divine demand is also that as God forgives us, so we must forgive others.  Our own appearance before the heavenly throne will find us being forgiven to the same extent we forgive others.  The Bible is rich with guidance on the place of forgiveness in the life of a Christian.  Below are some favourites:

Matthew 6:14-15 … For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses…

Ephesians 4:32… Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you… 

Colossians 3:13… Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive…

Luke 6:37…   Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven…

Psalm 86:5…You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you… 

Psalm 103:12…  As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us…

The Bible also says that “unforgiveness” can lead to resentment, anger, and distance between people. It can also prevent the restoration of broken relationships.  Hope remains a gift and a calling.  It is The Gift each one of us is called to make alive in the world of today.  A gift we are to share with others.  We have the grace we need to carry out such a task.  We have the mandate from God to do so.  All that is needed now is for us to commit to it. To allow Hope to guide us and to allow the Spirit of God to empower us to bring that light into the darkness of others to whom God sends us.

What gives me the most hope every day is God's grace; knowing that his grace is going to give me the strength for whatever I face, knowing that nothing is a surprise to God.

Rick Warren

Bishop Michael Hough                           Number 5                          January 2025