My pastor recently said in an Advent homily, “Advent is about living in bold hope!”
My husband and I recently started to ready the empty bedrooms upstairs in preparation for the adoption of a boy or girl, whoever may come. The simple act of moving in the direction of our desires gave us great hope. It changed the atmosphere in our home from unsettled uncertainty to hopeful anticipation.
Were we jumping the gun? Maybe in the eyes of the world. But I had spiritual vision on this one and peace. The thought that kept coming to me during this process was that this was an act of radical hope that God would deliver on how He was leading us. We had moved into the time of expectant hope and living faith in His miracles.
Roses lit the path for us. Roses kept appearing unexpectedly every week in different ways ever since St. Therese’ feast day in October, when my parish priest encouraged us to look for a rose as a sign that St. Therese was interceding for our requests. I never had a devotion to St. Therese.
Every weekend at the store, in our yard in the dead of winter, on ornaments given to us which were those of my recently deceased grandparents, and even around my house in ways that I never noticed before, I somehow came across a rose or bunch of roses. It was usually on Sundays.
Roses never had special meaning for me, but now they did. A young woman I spiritually companion had roses show up in her life consistently as she waited for “the one,” and he eventually came. I knew those roses meant that our prayers for a family would be answered in some way especially when they get showing up and affirming the path. We just had to hold out on hope.
Is there something that’s lighting the path for you? Maybe it's not roses but some other sign that is pointing you towards the fruitfulness you are waiting for. Is expectant and active waiting calling out to you this Advent, beckoning you to live in radical hope?