Does it ever stop raining in November? A Reflection on Hope
As we begin Advent Rev'd Hywel Snook, Transition Minister currently serving in Cynon Uchaf Ministry Area reflects on rain, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the risk of hope...
Moving back to Wales after 30 years has been brilliant, but there is one question- does it ever stop raining in November?
There is, however, a place where it rains even more than the Valleys, Burnley in Lancashire. When I was first ordained, I had to drive from Blackpool to Burnley for a monthly training evening. As you drive in the dark you see the everlasting rain gathering around Pendle Hill, in the blackness it feels like you are entering into Mordor from the Lords of the Rings. This can feel very depressing, yet on the First Sunday of Advent we light a candle to symbolise hope.
Hope at this time of the year can be difficult. We often think about feeling hopeful, but hope is not a feeling it is an openness to a different possibility. Hope is risky because, like it’s companions Faith and Love, it makes us vulnerable. The self protective response to darkness is to deny the possibility that change is possible, to protect ourselves from rejection and disappointment. This is all very human. I must admit I sometimes feel like this, expecting the worst then the disappointment can’t get me.
In Advent we are trying to live in expectation of Christmas. Christmas is not a nice story, but a story of extreme hope and vulnerability. God chooses to be born in extreme poverty and vulnerability, so Jesus understands intimately what being human is.
God takes the risk of hope to be with us in our broken world.
From this hope comes faith and ultimately love.
Most Christmases Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is on the TV. Despair, like all evil, is like the child catcher. It dances before us, enticing us with the promise that the sweets are “All free today”. Then when we take the sweets he throws us in the cages and laughs.
Hope can be scary.
Even scarier than the Child Catcher.
As Christians we are called to be like Jesus to take the risk of hope in a different possibility...to feel the fear of disappointment and do it anyway.
The hope is that eventually the rain will stop, even in Burnley, and sun will break through over Pendle Hill. We must pray for this hope, and to be open to the new possibilities, and, ultimately, the promise at the end of the Bible where God says, “Behold I make all things new”.
Collect for Advent 1
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility; that on the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.