Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent
Last week I reflected on the nature of our hope as Christ-followers. Hope is a confident pressing forward, a waiting on the edge of your seat, eagerly anticipating what is to come. For nearly nine years, I worked for a non-profit organization called Heart to Honduras. During countless trips to Honduras, I came to know the incredible faith and hope of the Honduran Christians. Despite daily hardship, suffering, and challenge, the Honduran people exhibit remarkable resilience. Nearly every sentence uttered by Honduran Christians is punctuated by “Glory to God!” or “thanks be to God!” These expressions flow from hearts that know how to wait upon the Lord in genuine hope. In rural villages, families rise around 4:00am and toil until late into the evening. Despite physical exhaustion, Honduran Christians find rest in the midst of it all. Our readings today point us to the kind of hope and rest to which the Hondurans give witness.
In our Gospel, Jesus calls all who are labored and burdened, inviting us into his rest. Paradoxically, we enter into this rest by taking up Jesus’ yoke. Shouldering our burdens in Christ, we cease striving and laboring under them. The writer of Hebrews helps us to understand this rest that goes beyond a mere cessation from work. “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest . . .” (Heb. 4:9-11a). We are drawn back to the Exodus, to deliverance into the Promised Land, to a Sabbath-rest that points us to the Paschal Mystery. We rest in our salvation, the salvation that comes to us by Christ’s efficacious work, not by any work of our own.
Coming from this place of rest, we are positioned to experience hope in the way that Isaiah presents it.
They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength,
they will soar as with eagles’ wings;
They will run and not grow weary,
walk and not grow faint.
Just as those who take up Christ’s yoke will find rest, those same ones who hope (wait upon) in the Lord will renew their strength. Recently, Honduras was devasted by Hurricanes Iota and Eta. These back-to-back storms ravaged the country, destroying nearly all the crops, burying communities in mud, washing out roads, and wiping away homes. The village of Lomas del Aguila sits high on a mountain. The two hurricanes destroyed both roads leading into the village, leaving the residents stranded without access to food and supplies. This 19-second video provides a vivid snapshot of people with renewed strength borne of hope. In this supply-ferrying brigade, you see and sense the strength that has arisen in the people, you hear the hope in their banter and laughter. This type of human resilience finds its foundation in the salvific rest that Christ graciously offers and the hope that is built upon that foundation. Today, let us pray that we may be strengthened in our faith by the witness of our Honduran brothers and sisters, and may we truly rest under Christ’s yoke. May our strength be renewed as we wait upon the Lord in genuine hope.
- Elizabeth Wourms