-- Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption
I uncharacteristically embraced the Christmas spirit much earlier this year. Usually I find myself in late-December, stuck soaking up the California sun, trying to magically conjure up some Christmas flair. But today wraps up my third week in full holiday mode. The decorations were up before the Heisman winner was announced and the gifts were online ordered before Michigan fired its football coach. Oh, and the carols have been a-playing for weeks.
Christmas carols are marvelous. I love all the songs from Burl Ives to Carrie Underwood, from the exclamations (Angels We Have Heard on High! and Joy to the World!) to the questions (Mary Did You Know? and What Child is This?). However, my all-time favorite is still O’ Holy Night.
O’ Holy Night contains the one of the greatest lines this side of “in a galaxy far, far away” ...
... A Thrill of Hope … A Weary World Rejoices.
A thrill of hope … it’s a line that melts my heart every December. Because I remember a time long ago when I had lost my hope.
Interestingly enough, an atheist, Frenchman Placide Cappeau, originally wrote O’ Holy Night in 1843 as a poem called Midnight, Christians to celebrate the renovation of the town organ in Roquemaure, France. A few years later, composer Adolphe Adam put the poem to music. Then in 1855, American minister John Sullivan Dwight created the song we know based on Cappeau’s text.
The poem originally said, “The entire world thrills with hope, on this night that gives it a Savior.”
Cappeau was thrilled by hope, but what thrills you? An amusement park ride? A promotion? A quiet night with your significant other? Zooming down a winding mountain road? Short lines at Costco?
I find watching talented performers extremely thrilling: a dancer, a singer, a skater, an actor, an athlete, or a musician. I find the opening to U2’s Where the Streets Have no Name completely thrilling. A sunset. Standing on the edge of a cliff in Zion National Park. Laughing with a Mozambican child. Walking down the aisle with Beautiful Karla. All so thrilling.
Are you thrilled by hope?
I am. Because it can be gone in a flash.
And can our world be any wearier? There is the constant threat of terrorism. Natural disasters pockmark the planet. Wars and the rumors of wars highlight the news. Social injustice. Human trafficking. Poverty. Racism. Homelessness. Religious persecution, mass shootings, and cancer.
We live a world that appears to be unfixable.
And yet, 2,000 years ago, a young couple settled in for the night in a remote stable of a tiny town, in a little country surrounded by a sea of Roman oppression. As darkness fell, the world paused and held its breath … like I do before Mike Trout goes back to the wall, or before The Edge plucks that first note, or before Simone Biles takes flight … everything appears to stop … and wait.
Like the shepherds in the field waited …
Like the angels waited to take center stage …
Like the young couple waited in the stable …
And then the crowd goes wild because the catch is made; the gymnast sticks the landing, the guitar solo echoes through the arena, an angel appears …
… and the baby Jesus takes his first breath.
Eons ago, I found myself without hope. It was a lonely bottom-of-a-pit kind of place. I adamantly believed that the rivers of troubles in my life weren’t going to part and the walls of my problems were not going to tumble.
Thankfully, God brought me out of that pit. In doing so, he not only restored my hope, he super-sized it. And now, hope is what gets my feet out of bed. It’s what moves me to help orphans in Africa and to raise money for clean water wells.
My heart breaks for people who go through life without the hope that Jesus brings. Sure, there’s the amazing realization that through Jesus we gain forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God, and eternal life. At times those truths can feel a bit abstract. But as with love and faith, hope is tangible. It pulses in your heart.
A pastor I read named Paul David Tripp says that we as humans are hard-wired to hope. And that what you hope in will set the course of your life. That for hope to be hope, it has to fix what’s broken. Hope is not a situation, or an expectation, or a possession.
Hope is a person: Jesus.
I’ve discovered firsthand, that Andy Dufresne was right. He may not have had a Jesus-filled hope, but, nonetheless, I know that hope, even when you feel hopeless, never dies.
Hope tells me that we don’t have to look to governments and politicians to fix this weary world. Hope says that the baby who was born in Bethlehem is the one who will restore this world to the way it was meant to be. Because that is why he came. To fix hearts through forgiveness, reconcile relationships, and to return the world to the way it was at the beginning – free of pain, and worry, and evil, and even death itself.
For me that is thrilling. To think that the world’s weariness will one day cease and that all that will be left is the rejoicing.
Merry, Merry Christmas everybody.
