'A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices!'

There is a spine-tingling line in the Christmas hymn, O Holy Night: “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices!”

A weary world

Our world is unmistakably weary. More than three-quarters of Brits say the UK is headed in the wrong direction. For the first time, the UK has dropped out of the top 20 happiest countries in the World Happiness Report.

The Economist warns us of a “great relationship recession” – deepening loneliness, thinning friendships, fewer people forming stable partnerships, and couples choosing not to have children because of their fears for the future.

The economy is struggling, and we have little faith in our leaders. Public debate is fraught and often bitter, and institutions are in tumult.

Sometimes it seems we lack even the desire for hope, or a belief that hope is even remotely possible. We are quick to point fingers and slow to extend grace.

A thrill of hope

And yet, into this weary world, at Christmas, came a thrill of hope.

Andrew Delbanco, a professor at Columbia University, wrote a book about US culture called The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope. He said: “The heart of any civilisation or culture is this hope. [It] enables a culture… to overcome the lurking suspicion that all our getting and spending is mere fidgeting as we wait for the end.”

The anthropologist Clifford Geertz suggested that without hope, a society becomes a formless monster, with no sense of purpose or self-control, but simply a chaos of impulses and vague directions (does that sound familiar?). Flicking through the papers, scrolling through social media, listening to politicians and economists… we’re fidgeting… we’re trying to find something to do.

In a pessimistic world, Christianity is marked by a Living Hope that transforms our perspectives and changes lives.

Hope is a Person

I am immensely encouraged by Peter’s first letter to the early Christian communities scattered across the Roman provinces of Asia Minor. Intensely persecuted, exiled from each other, and terrorised by Emperor Nero, they had little reason to hope. And yet, they knew the thrill of hope in Jesus Christ.

Two people can view the same situation very differently depending on their level of hope.

Peter could have looked at the church’s circumstances and been utterly dispirited: the church under the cosh, the Romans too powerful, faith too fragile to ever fully flourish. He could have packed it all in. False optimism also posed a danger: the excitement of seeing the gospel spread across the Empire could have blinded him to the pain and suffering of those who believed.

But Peter looked at the scattered first-century Christians through a lens of hope… after all, he had seen the empty tomb! He’d seen the risen Christ. He knew that hope is not a manifesto, or a diktat, or a movement, or a theory… it is a Person. And that maybe – for such a time as this – Peter, the unschooled, ordinary, fisherman who would one day die for his faith in Jesus, had been placed in this world for a purpose. The greatest purpose. And so have you!

Hope overcomes

The weariness of the world takes its toll. In my own patch it hurts to see people facing poverty or homelessness, victims of domestic violence, farmers on the brink of losing everything.

But I have also seen that it’s possible to be in challenging places where hope is not exhausted, but rather stretched and grown.

We need to hold on to eternal promises such as in 1 Peter 1v5, which tells us that we are protected and shielded by God’s power. Hope is not fragile but indestructible. Hope overcomes.

Could you be a person of hope… in your family, on your street, at the office? It is so easy for a culture of negativity or despair to become contagious – but that is not the Christian way because we know a better story.

A child is born in obscurity, in poverty and amidst scandal… and that child is the long awaited Saviour of us all, the God of the universe entering His creation to put an end to the tragedy, the misery, the disappointment. Let the shiver go down your spine, feel the thrill of hope and then speak with that hope into a weary world that so desperately needs it.

Christian MPs and political figures contribute as believers not party politicians. en does not endorse any one particular party.