大象传媒

Good morning. First, on this St Andrew鈥檚 Day, all sympathy to those bereaved and injured in Glasgow last night.
Another landmark in the church鈥檚 year is Advent, which begins on Sunday. It is one of my favourite seasons. I love the hymns and readings with their sense of expectation. In contrast to what we have made of Christmas, Advent has a clarity and purity about it. I think of it like one of the trees we see now, branches bare against the sky, stripped down to essentials, ready and waiting.
The waiting which lies at the heart of Advent is an interesting, rather subtle mix-and the key is provided by the readings from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Christian Old Testament. When those writers looked around they saw, as we do now, a world in the grip of cruelty, oppression and injustice-yet they believed, despite everything, that it was created by a good God. So running through their writings is the conviction that one day God would act to establish true justice ; and Christians came to share that hope
Of course, believers and unbelievers alike must do all we can now to lessen the burden of human suffering and change the political and economic factors that make for such suffering. But for some this will be underpinned by a deep hope that in the end true justice will be seen and known.
Written on a wall in the besieged Warsaw ghetto in 1944 were these words.
I believe. I believe. I believe.
With a perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah
And in the coming of the messiah I believe.
And even though he tarry
I nevertheless believe,
Even though he tarry
Yet, I believe 鈥�.
Of course the sceptic -and the sceptical side of every believer-says. 鈥淵es, poignant, beautiful, but just whistling in the dark. Sadly, just whistling in the dark.鈥� Perhaps. But this always takes me back to a lovely poem of Thomas Hardy. He is leaning over a farm gate looking at the bleak winter landscape. All is cold and hard and dry. Then he hears a thrush sing. Frail, gaunt and small, 鈥淗e flings his soul upon the growing gloom.鈥� There seems so little reason for such joy the poet comes to reflect:
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.