Good morning! It’s officially the Advent Season, which means it’s also time for our TCU Advent Devotionals. Over the next 3 weeks you will receive devotionals that will be written by TCU students, staff, faculty, and administrators. Our first devotional for this Advent season comes to us from Sarah Walters.
Sarah began serving as our Assistant Director in The Office of Religious & Spiritual Life in June, having come to us from the School of Music. Sarah’s tremendous administrative gifts are second only to her deep sense of compassion and calming presence, making her a truly wonderful addition to our team. She gently and genuinely embodies HOPE in her work every day, inviting others to set aside the chaos of the moment and reminding them that HOPE has always been, and always will be, present. As you read her words for us this morning, and as we light the candle of HOPE this week, I hope you will feel inspired to carry that HOPE & light into the world around you. -Rev. Todd Boling, University Chaplain
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to throw away; a time to tear and a time to sew; a time to keep silent and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.
I must admit, when Todd first asked me to write the first advent devotional of this season, I thought, “Oh, what an honor.” Then, immediately, my anxiety set in. While I am a person of faith, I am also a questioner, a skeptic, and oftentimes a doubter. Thomas has nothing on me. I have been angry with God, confused by God and quite simply frustrated with God. Clearly, I am not the best choice of someone to write an advent devotional. Yet, here I am and guess what the topic is…Hope! Of course, it is. How am I supposed to offer hope in an angry, divided, and hurting world? So, as God made me, I began to think on the subject, and I thought and thought and thought.
There are the obvious messages on hope to point to—the birth of Jesus, deity aside, is the ultimate message of hope. His parents gave birth to him in a dangerous time under foreign occupation with the hope that all parents share, the hope that he would grow into a healthy human adult. When one considers the deity of Christ, God himself brought his own child to the world to show God’s love and hope. Clearly, the birth of Christ is hopeful. Yet, to me, this hope is easy from which to distance myself. Of course, God has hope. He, after all, created the world and everything in it. What can I say about hope when I am someone who reads the newspaper too much and holds a masters degree in public policy? I decided to think about “hope” some more.
On another day while driving to work and listening to music, not anxiety provoking news, I heard the familiar song “Turn, Turn, Turn” by the Byrds. The song, based off of Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 and written by Pete Seeger, has always been a favorite one of mine especially when I found out at age 14 that it was the #1 hit on the Billboard the year my parents were married in 1965 (during Advent no less!). It seemed poetic and fitting to my 14 year old brain and it still does today. This June my parents, Michael and Pamela Chaplin will be married sixty years.
I wish I could say that it has all been beautiful and uplifting, but I wouldn’t be telling the truth. For sure, by all accounts, my parents have had a happy marriage, but in sixty years—there has been so much. They brought my two sisters and me into the world (a time to be born), they moved across country multiple times with multiple children and pets (time to break down and time to build up), they lost both of their fathers prematurely to suicide and cancer (a time to mourn), their children and their jobs challenged them (a time to keep silent and a time to speak, not necessarily in that order) and so on and so on. They did all of this during a time when our country was at war, a president resigned, an economy struggled, wars and famine raged, then our country was at war again and most recently, a deadly global pandemic spread and currently, a bitterly divided nation seeps into our daily lives.
After all that they have gone through, my mom, Pam, is living with Alzheimer’s disease, and the sweet, loving, and creative person I once knew is gone. She has been replaced by an angry and confused old woman I do not recognize. At this point you might be wondering, isn’t this devotional supposed to be about hope, you know the feeling we get when we hope and await the birth of the Christ Child? It seems like Sarah has skipped over hope straight to the “a time to die”. I argue that this devotional is still, absolutely, an essay on hope and finding it in unexpected places like Nazareth. How could I not be hopeful when I see my dad, Mike, 81 years old now, watching over my mom? He continues to live up to his wedding vows of “for better and for worse” and “in sickness and in health.” Now deeply in “the sickness and worse parts” I am moved by the beauty of his love for my mom. How can I not be hopeful when I see love survive everything—everything including loving a partner who is fundamentally a different and difficult person now? My parents are now in the twilight of their lives, and it is this final act of their marriage where I find my hope today. Love is possible even though it’s different than anticipated, and it is harder than imagined. How can I have anything but hope when I see love shimmering through?
Let us pray.
Lord, Creator and Sustainer, thank you for the gift of hope. Thank you for allowing us to see your gift of love shine through the darkness, giving us hope for the future. Please grant us patience through our struggles and help us identify that which gives us hope. AMEN.