Can you imag­ine wan­der­ing around in the dark, with­out a light to help you see? Would you be excited when at last you found the light?

We have an Amer­i­can expres­sion that says “there’s a light at the end of the tun­nel”, which means that you can see a light shin­ing in the dark­ness. You can see a way out of your cur­rent hard sit­u­a­tion and you have hope that it will be over soon.

What do you sup­pose the per­son who wrote these words was thinking?

The peo­ple who walk in dark­ness have seen a great light. On those liv­ing in the land of deep dark­ness a light has dawned.

I think it was more than just a sun­rise. I think it was the begin­ning of a new way of life.

Dur­ing this Christ­mas sea­son, I wanted to take the time to share with you some tra­di­tions that you may not find in the stores full of presents and Santa Claus. There is another side to Christ­mas, and that is the birth­day of Jesus, which is often cel­e­brated dur­ing the period known as Advent.

Advent is a sea­son of prepa­ra­tion, observed in many Chris­t­ian churches for the four weeks before Christ­mas and fin­ish­ing on Christ­mas Day, the day we cel­e­brate Jesus’ birth. An advent wreath is often used for dec­o­ra­tion. This is a ring with 4 can­dles in it. One can­dle is lit each week as a church or fam­ily dis­cusses the mean­ing of the theme that week. While dif­fer­ent churches use the can­dles to rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent themes, we are going to talk about the very pop­u­lar ones of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.

This week’s theme is Hope, and the quote I shared above is from The Bible. This light refers to Jesus and the hope of a bet­ter life that He brings.

What brings you hope? Are you hop­ing for a spe­cial gift for Christ­mas? Do you hope to make some changes in the New Year? What­ever your desire is, hope is a way of antic­i­pat­ing and look­ing for­ward to the changes that are to come.

Please tell me in the com­ment sec­tion below what you hope for.

I hope for each of you a joy­ous Hol­i­day sea­son with fam­ily and friends!