Shane Ash

Advent is a season for dreamers and truth-tellers, for poets and prophets. It’s often described as a time of waiting, but Advent is not about passive waiting. Instead, it’s a call to agency and action in the waiting—a naming of the tension between our deepest longings and the reality of what is and a movement from despair to active hope.

In this first week of Advent, hope emerges as the essential action for living well within this tension. Hope is a combination of possibility and pathway. It acknowledges that the present reality doesn’t yet reflect the life we long for or the future we desire, but it also sees that, with intentional action, change is possible. Hope invites us to name our longings, confront our reality, and take action in new ways. Despair is the opposite of hope…a loss of agency and action. 

It seems to me that naming our longings requires the daring work of contemplation – a thorough examining of our inner expectations and discerning how much of our felt experience is shaped by our own imagination, fears, and projections. Naming reality also demands courage—the bravery to face the inner pain, fear, and resistances that obscures the possibilities of goodness, beauty, and joy of the present moment. 

Last week, I witnessed this tension in a powerful moment of raw vulnerability. Someone shared their longing for freedom from the weight of fears and past wounds. As tears flowed, I saw them experience both the ache of what was missing and the quiet healing spark of what could be. That spark—hope—didn’t deny the pain but dared to proclaim the possibility of newness. And in that moment hope, of engaged agency and action, they shifted from despair to an active participation in the reality of their life. 

This is the hope of Advent: the invitation and boldness to say, “This is not how it has to be,” followed by the courage to declare, “Therefore, I can and will…”.