A time of kept promises
As we peel back the dogeared pages of our calendars and tack the last page of 2025 to the wall, there is a kind of exhalation that escapes our lips and hearts. This has been a year of tremendous upheaval, a year of great suffering and anxiety, a year of death and life, as well as a year demanding numerous creative pivots. I don’t know about you, but in spite of it all, I still feel hope in the air…
The presence of Emmanuel in conversation and song, for the next 40 days, is a reminder of hope for me. Thank God, God is with us! No government mandate can re-order that eternal truth.
For many believers, Advent is a time of kept promises. The reading from Isaiah uses the word ‘shall’ eight times before we reply. Eight specific times we are called to lift our eyes from where we stand, invited to let a little hope into our hearts. The heaviness we have felt as we experienced one loss after another this year, is not where God will allow our hearts to remain.
In the Gospel of Matthew, we hear the word ‘will’ repeated thirteen times. Again and again the evangelist who lived, perhaps, the most complicated vocational experience as a follower of Christ, announces to us what the Oxford dictionary states as, ‘expressing inevitable events.’ It is inevitable that we will experience more than we know. The eating and drinking, the building of barns, the amassing of wealth, the injustices perpetrated on the widow and orphan, the ejection and rejection of the stranger, is not the story. We are insiders and we know.
If Advent is a time of kept promises — let’s turn a mirror on ourselves. What promise has God made to you, personally? One that you finger when you’re feeling hopeless, the one that lingers in your mind, so much that you have almost talked yourself out of wishing for it again. Which of God’s promises to you, when you uttered them in the dark, do you most need fulfilled during these next few weeks? Our God is a God of verbs. God acts. C’mon, do it. DARE to articulate your need to the One who hears your whispers. Dare to cross the threshold of hope this Advent. You have done so well this year. Spend some time in the manger. There’s hope there.
Monique Jacobs has been in active ministry in the church for over 40 years but the cherry on top of her life of service is her role at Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada as Director of Mission and Identity. She celebrates the incredible work all Catholic Charities agencies accomplish and is grateful for her role as a part of the larger team.