Quick Summary:

We mark this holiday time with displays of glitz and glitter and erect strings of lights on our homes and businesses that will shine through these December nights. But behind these displays is, I think, a primitive urge to do what we can, in whatever way we can, to fight against the encroaching dark. And that darkness comes in many forms.

The Bible’s oldest word for hope, Frederick Niedner points out, is “tikvah,” which also means cord or thread. The meaning of the this "cord" is obvious. “In the darkness, beset by fears, threats and enemies known and unknown, we sometimes find ourselves clinging to a single thread [or rope] that keeps us going from one moment to the next. Without hope, some solitary cord from which to suspend our lives, the darkness would have us.” (Niedner)

These words from Isaiah 40 this morning served as that cord, that TIKVAH, for a whole community of people who had come to know the darkness of exile.

How about us--our future? To what hope are our lives tethered? The cord to which we fasten our grip must be anchored in something beyond ourselves. The line that leads to Jesus, in the end, is the one with staying power that endures even when we do not.