Eight words… “I’m sorry, but we’ve pronounced your son dead.”
Those eight words have impacted my life more than I can fully grasp. Two days prior was one of the most incredible days in my life as I held my son Kenny for the first time. Just under four years into our marriage, my wife and I were still in our twenties. On top of that, I recently graduated from Harding University with my bachelor's degree and was preparing to attend seminary at Harding School of Theology.
Life seemed to be going so well, and if that wellness was light, I can’t imagine how it could have been any brighter until that day on Friday, August 2, 2002. It was sometime in the afternoon when the light suddenly turned to darkness.
I have learned to navigate in darkness in the twenty years since that terrible day.1 God has renewed my faith in Jesus Christ, which has been the light that has allowed me to see the path forward, but that doesn’t mean the way has always been bright. Life is filled with ups and downs. As a minister of the gospel, there are moments of great joy, but just as it takes little effort to cut down a strong tree, there are moments of great sorrow that can easily displace the joy.
Rather than a bright summer day full of blue skies, life often seems more like a damp and dreary day. The day is light enough to know that it’s there, but the clouds remain gray, and I am the weary journeyman who must still put one foot in front of the other.
I say that to say that I am a weary soul. But I have not lost hope because God raised the crucified Jesus Christ from death. This is the faith that sustains my hope. This faith keeps me going despite doubts fueled by disappointment, grief, and fear. This is also why Advent matters to my faith, and I believe it matters to your faith.
Here we are in late November, and the skies are again gray. Yet, in giving our attention to the Advent season, we are reminded that hope remains. God is not finished, and we have not been abandoned to the weariness of our souls.
In his book Living The Christian Year, Bobby Gross describes Advent as a season for waiting for the coming of God. Gross writes,
Our world is messed up and we are messed up. We lament our condition and long for God to set things right, to make us better. So we pray and watch for signs of his presence. We do all we know to do so that we are open and ready. In the midst of hardship and disappointment, we continue to wait. We wait in hope.2
Yes, that seems to resonate so well.
Advent is a time for entering the story of God’s redemptive good once again so that even in the weariness, we are reminded that what is beautiful, true, and good does exist. It exists because God is bringing it about in the coming of Jesus. No, this redemptive good has yet to be fully realized, so we are waiting, but as we begin the new Christian year, we are reminded of the hope that sustains our waiting as an act of faith.
Yes, we are waiting, still waiting, for the day when the darkness will be no more. But that day when we will walk in the light of the Lord is coming.
“Oh house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” - Isaiah 2:5
You can read the full story about my son's death and the rediscovery of hope by reading K. Rex Butts, “Lost Sons,” Surrendering to Hope: Guidance for the Broken, eds. John Mark Hicks, Christine Fox Parker, and Bobby Valentine, Abilene: Leafwood Publishers, 2018.
Bobby Gross, Living The Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009, 37.