Hope

Today is the second Sunday of Advent. As we have discussed last week, it is a common custom amongst many Unitarian communities to light Advent Candles during the Advent Sundays.

Today we light the second Candle of Hope. We light this candle to symbolise our various hopes for the better. The hopes we wish could vary from one person to another. The hope we wish could be very personal or very general. The simple truth is: we all have hope for something better, and they are deserved.

It is easy to brush away hopes as something abstract, non-tangible, or---for some people---even useless or a waste of time. But it is not quite so. Hope is the beginning of a goal; and the goal is the beginning of an action. It is by hoping to be the best team that footballers set their goal to win football leagues yearly, which pushes them to practice and improve. It is by hoping that there will be less suffering people that food bank workers set a goal to distribute food to as many people as possible. It is not enough to just have hopes and only hopes with no action, but any action without any hopes and goals for the end is an action without a purpose---totally random.

We light this candle to remind us to always hope for the better, to reflex on what we hope for, and to remember to make our hopes come true.