Finding the True Meaning of Christmas with Charlie Brown: When Longing Meets Hope
For Your Heart Today
Every year, A Charlie Brown Christmas captures something many of us feel but rarely say out loud—that even in a season filled with lights, music, and tradition, our hearts can still feel a little off, a little empty, a little unsure of what’s missing. Advent permits us to name that ache. It is the season where God invites us to be honest about our longings: for peace, for healing, for joy, and for things to be made right again.
Into those very longings, God speaks through Isaiah with an invitation to come, to listen, and to be filled by His unfailing love. And in Jesus—who came near, put on flesh, and walks with us still—that love takes on a name and a face. This is the hope Advent holds: that in every season and every longing, Jesus is our living hope.
3 Takeaways
1. Longing reminds us of God’s intention for wholeness.
The prophets and psalmists name the aches we carry and point us toward the God who sees and understands them.
2. God’s unfailing love is the answer to our deepest longings.
God invites the thirsty to come, eat, and live. His everlasting covenant of faithful love is the place where our hunger and thirst are met.
3. Hope is a practiced posture of trust.
Like generations before us, we wait and watch—anchored by the presence of Christ, who is our living hope.
Breath Prayer
Inhale: In my longing…
Exhale: …I hope in You.
Full Manuscript - Estimated Reading Time: 14–16 minutes
Every year, A Charlie Brown Christmas captures something many of us feel but rarely say out loud—that even in a season filled with lights, music, and tradition, our hearts can still feel a little off, a little empty, a little unsure of what’s missing. Advent permits us to name that ache. It is the season where God invites us to be honest about our longings: for peace, for healing, for joy, and for things to be made right again.
Into those very longings, God speaks through Isaiah with an invitation to come, to listen, and to be filled by His unfailing love. And in Jesus—who came near, put on flesh, and walks with us still—that love takes on a name and a face. This is the hope Advent holds: that in every season and every longing, Jesus is our living hope.
3 Takeaways
1. Longing reminds us of God’s intention for wholeness.
The prophets and psalmists name the aches we carry and point us toward the God who sees and understands them.
2. God’s unfailing love is the answer to our deepest longings.
God invites the thirsty to come, eat, and live. His everlasting covenant of faithful love is the place where our hunger and thirst are met.
3. Hope is a practiced posture of trust.
Like generations before us, we wait and watch—anchored by the presence of Christ, who is our living hope.
Breath Prayer
Inhale: In my longing…
Exhale: …I hope in You.
Full Manuscript - Estimated Reading Time: 14–16 minutes
When Longing Meets Hope
Good morning, Family.
The year was 1965, the date was Thursday, December 9. I was just a little girl, and I don’t remember if I actually saw it, but that was the night A Charlie Brown Christmas aired for the very first time on CBS at 7:30 p.m. It was watched by 16 million people, almost half the country’s televisions at that time. And for decades after that, this 30-minute Christmas special became the unofficial start of the season. At least it did for me.
When it came on each year, it was like the ball drop on New Year’s Eve, the signal that Christmas time was finally here. It became a tradition, a moment of nostalgia, something many of us shared with our children, our grandchildren, our nieces and nephews. But have you ever watched A Charlie Brown Christmas again through adult eyes?
As a kid, I remember it being warm and joyful—a holiday story with great music and a few laughs. Snoopy was my favorite, and to this day, I have quite a collection of Snoopy and Peanuts memorabilia. But when you watch A Charlie Brown Christmas fresh with adult eyes, you begin to see something much deeper. The message the creator Charles M. Schulz was trying to convey in the mid-60s, drawing on his own Christian faith, speaks to something deeply and profoundly human.
Right from the opening scene, even before the title comes up, we see and hear Charlie Brown wrestling with something. Listen to what Charlie Brown says, and notice his facial expressions, which are just as telling. Charlie Brown Clip
Isn’t it something how a simple cartoon can hold so much truth? Watching that scene as a child, you don’t catch the weight of it. But as adults, as life happens and experiences accumulate, we begin to see ourselves in Charlie Brown. Because what he names in that moment is something we don’t often say out loud: that even in a season filled with beauty and light, we can still feel like something is missing.
A sense that something inside us is just a bit off. Some degree of heaviness or sadness we can’t quite explain and may seek to push aside. A longing for something in our hearts that we may not even be fully aware of.
Well, today is the first Sunday of Advent, and Advent speaks to longing. For many of us, when we hear the word Advent, we think of Christmas—and the two are certainly connected—but they are not the same. Advent means “coming.” Advent is the season before the celebration. It’s the season of anticipation and waiting for Jesus to come as Emmanuel.
And the waiting of Advent is a season of longing—longing for God to come, Immanuel; longing for God’s promises to manifest; longing for joy to the world. Advent is not about pretending that all is right with the world, merry and bright. In fact, Advent is a space to be brutally honest—honest just like Charlie Brown—because honesty opens hearts. It creates room within us for God to meet us in the waiting and to speak into our longings.
Longings, in fact, that God has been speaking into for centuries. Which leads us to our scripture passage for this morning and an invitation.
“Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink… even if you have no money! Come, take your choice of wine or milk, it’s all free! Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength? Why pay for food that does you no good? Listen to me, and you will eat what is good; you will enjoy the finest food. Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life. I will make an everlasting covenant with you. I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to David.” (Isaiah 55:1–3)
Unpacking the Story
Our passage from the book of Isaiah was written in the 6th century BC to the children of Israel in Babylonian captivity, after they were overtaken and captured following the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC. They were far from their homeland, far from the Temple, and far from everything that once centered them in God.
They were in exile because of the choices they made over and over again. Over time, they began to trust in other forms of security—political alliances, cultural pressures, their own strength—and refused to heed the warnings of the prophets who kept calling them to turn back to God and God’s ways.
Simply put, they had drifted far from God. And now they were living with the consequences of that drift. They were living in the pain of their disconnection from God, and their rebellion had spiritual hunger that had caught up with them. And in that reality, there was a longing. A longing for something more, for something better, for something to be restored and made whole again. A longing they perhaps couldn’t quite name, but a longing God understood completely.
And it is to that longing that Isaiah speaks for God. He writes: “Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink even if you have no money! Come, take your choice of wine or milk—it’s all free!”
Through the words of Isaiah, God begins by naming their condition—they are thirsty, hungry, empty—and God’s response is a startling invitation.
Although we only read the first three verses of this chapter today, the opening seven verses include twelve imperatives with the same message and intention—twelve invitations from the heart of God. Speaking for God, Isaiah writes: “Come to the waters… Come, buy and eat… Come, buy wine and milk without money… Listen carefully to Me… Incline your ear… Hear Me… Seek the Lord while He may be found… Call upon Him… Return to the Lord…”
Do you hear the theme in these invitations? The earnest intensity? A repeated reaching out—almost pleading. It is the voice of a God who longs for us and refuses to leave us in our emptiness, in our longings.
And God is not talking about literal water, milk, wine, or money here. He is speaking metaphorically, but he is pointing to something very real. In this passage, God invites the thirsty to come to the waters, which represent life itself. He says come, buy milk and wine, even if you have no money. Milk is about nourishment and strength. Wine is about joy, delight, and celebration.
And here’s the incredible gift—God says it’s all free, without cost. God is offering His bountiful grace. It is the promise of abundant life—the same promise Jesus makes later while on earth. A promise of wholeness and fullness that touches the spiritual, the emotional, and even the physical for those who accept the invitation and seek to live in alignment with God.
God was extending an invitation to the abundant life of being connected with God and living into the fullness of His presence. That’s what the text meant to the original hearers and what it means to us, too.
Because while we may not be in exile, the longings God is appealing to in Isaiah’s readers are not unfamiliar to us.
Our Longings
Longing is part of being human—ever since the first disruption in the Garden of Eden, which initiated the breach between God and us, longing has been part of the human condition. A longing to repair what is broken. A longing to heal what’s missing. A longing that speaks of how things were supposed to be before the world became broken.
Sometimes we feel the longing clearly: longing for peace in the middle of chaos, longing for healing where there is still pain, longing for clarity when the future feels fuzzy, longing for joy when joy seems far away.
And sometimes longing shows up in more subtle ways—a longing to feel cared for rather than always being the one who cares, a longing to feel significant and know your life really matters, a longing to feel truly connected rather than on the sidelines or alone.
And sometimes the longing is not just about us. A longing for someone we love to be okay and whole, a longing for unity where there is painful division, or a longing for justice in places where harm has been done.
Now, here is something essential to understand and remember. Longing doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong or bad. Often, longing points to something true: something deep within us that longs for what it’s supposed to be. A glimpse of God’s intention for the world. A glimpse of a Kingdom reality. Something God wants, too.
And Advent, the season we step into today, speaks exactly to this truth because, as I said earlier, Advent is all about longing—the longing for God to be with us, the longing for God to make things right, the longing for God to draw near and do what only God can do.
That’s why the next verse in our Isaiah passage is so pivotal and critical to this reality of longing. Right after God invites His people to come and listen, He says: “And you will find life! I will make an everlasting covenant with you. I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to David.”
Did you catch the flow of what’s happening in this passage? God acknowledges their metaphorical hunger and thirst and extends the invitation to come, eat, listen, and seek. He is offering the answer to their longings—and in a phrase, that answer is God’s love. His faithful, steadfast, and everlasting love is the answer to their and our deepest longings.
It’s from that place of love that God invites us to come, drink, and live abundantly, for free. And when we do, He meets our longings in many ways—sometimes directly by drawing near in His presence, sometimes through the love and care of others, sometimes through slow healing over time and His comfort, sometimes by reminding us of who and whose we are, sometimes by reshaping our longings so we can see what our hearts are truly reaching for.
God’s love doesn’t bypass our longings. It holds and undergirds them because longing actually does something in us, if we allow it. It opens space in our hearts for God, who desires to draw near and respond to those longings.
That’s what Advent offers to us. It begins with the longing for Jesus to come because longing is a doorway that can open us to God and the hope God extends because of His love.
Hope
In other words, Advent doesn’t just leave us with longing in and of itself. The season of Advent leads us somewhere. Advent leads us toward hope.
Now, hope in Scripture—biblical hope—isn’t wishful thinking. It’s not wishing on a star or crossing our fingers. Hope is a choice to trust the character of God while we wait and long for what we may not yet see.
Psalm 130 is such a powerful companion verse to God’s invitation through Isaiah. It captures hope as a decision we make as we long and wait. It reads: “I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him. I have put my hope in his word. I long for the Lord more than watchmen long for the dawn, yes, more than watchmen long for the dawn. O Israel, hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is unfailing love.” (Psalm 130:5–7a)
This isn’t passive waiting. This is active trust—choosing, declaring, an intentional leaning toward God that says, “I will wait… I will watch… I will hope… because the God I’m hoping in is faithful, steadfast, and full of unfailing love.”
Hope in Scripture is always anchored in God’s character and God’s promises. Isaiah names God’s everlasting covenant of faithful love. And the psalmist calls it unfailing love. Both point to one truth: hope is rooted not in our circumstances but in the God who holds them in His love.
And here is where longing and hope meet. Longing tells us what we ache for. Hope tells us where to place that ache. In God’s hands. Longing reveals our hunger for something. Hope declares where our hunger is fed—from God’s abundant love. Longing opens our hearts. Hope anchors them in the very heart of God’s care for you and for me.
In fact, the hope Isaiah pointed toward—the hope the psalmist waited for—the hope our own hearts lean toward—is not a distant concept or theory. Hope came near. Hope put on flesh. Hope has a name, and His name is Jesus.
Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s covenant, the embodiment of God’s unfailing love, the One who meets us in our longings and holds us while we wait. Think about it this way: everything God promised through His everlasting covenant of love, He fulfilled in Jesus—love that did not stay distant but came to us in flesh and blood.
And this is where all our longings converge. Because in Jesus, every longing we carry is met—not always in the way we imagined and perhaps not in the timing we’d like—but always through the presence of the One who embodies God’s faithful love.
Think about it: in our longing for peace, Jesus is our peace. In our longing to feel cared for, Jesus carries what we can no longer hold. In our longing for significance, Jesus names us beloved. In our longing for connection, Jesus draws near and never lets us go. In our longing for justice, Jesus stands with the wounded and promises that harm will not have the final word.
Jesus doesn’t erase our longings. He inhabits them. He dignifies them. He transforms them with the kind of hope only God can give.
Now, hope doesn’t always come easily. It doesn’t always rush in with full power. Sometimes hope begins with the smallest spark of trust—a decision to lean on God even when we’re not sure how everything will unfold.
The truth is, hope is not passive. Hope is practiced. It grows as we keep choosing trust, as we keep opening our hearts, as we keep remembering God is present right here, right now, with a good plan in His time and in His way.
I’m reminded of a story of a woman—I’ll call her Jessica—who was in a season where her longing felt heavy. It was a longing for peace and strength and for something inside of her to come back to life. For a while, she said hope felt almost impossible. She didn’t know how to hope again, so she began practicing hope in the smallest way she could manage.
Each morning, before the day swept in, she lit a single candle. She kept it simple. She said there was no ritual, no pressure to feel anything. Just a quiet moment with a small flame before God and the words of Psalm 130: “I wait for the Lord… and in His word I put my hope.”
She said the candle reminded her that even when the light is small, light is still light. Even when hope flickers, hope is still hope. And God is present. Nothing in her circumstances changed immediately… but over time, something in her did. A small light came back on inside her. Her longing met hope.
Her story reminds us that sometimes hope begins quietly—with a flicker, a small act, a simple choosing. But hope is never meant to stay private. It grows, it steadies us, and then it gently turns us outward toward those who need hope too.
As hope grows in us, we begin to notice those around us who, like Charlie Brown, feel that something is off, something is missing. We can’t fix their longing. But we can hold hope with them. We can be the steady, compassionate presence that God has been for us.
In other words, hope received becomes hope offered. You know, there’s a passage in Corinthians where Paul encourages his listeners to comfort others with the comfort they themselves had received from Christ. Well, hope works the same way. The hope of Jesus, which extends to us and meets us in our longings, becomes the hope we can extend to someone else who needs it.
And our world is aching for hope, brothers and sisters, especially in this season of Advent. So, as we prepare to close, I want to invite you to join me in a simple prayer. A prayer that not only welcomes hope into our own lives but opens us to becoming instruments of hope for the people God will place in our path this week.
Lord, make me an instrument of Your hope. Where shadows linger, let me carry Your light. Where hearts grow weary, let me bear Your presence. Where the world feels heavy, let me reflect Your promise. Fill me, use me, send me—that Your hope may rise in me and reach through me to others. Amen.
Closing
Family, as we prepare to close, I keep thinking of Charlie Brown’s honest moment, his sense that something was missing, that longing he didn’t exactly know how to name. Isaiah knew that ache. And into that longing, he spoke God’s invitation: “Come… listen… seek me… and I will make with you an everlasting covenant—my faithful love.”
And this is exactly where Advent meets us—right in the middle of our longing, with the promise of a covenant love that draws near. And today we know that covenant love has a name. Jesus is our living hope. Hope that comes near and meets us where we are. Hope that holds our longings and hope that leads us gently forward into the loving care of our God.
And I don’t know exactly what the Spirit has been whispering to you this morning, but my prayer is that this becomes the beginning of a season where God speaks into your longing in real and tangible ways—and where the hope He stirs in you becomes hope you are able to extend to someone else this week.
May the hope of this season ignite in your heart and spread like fire.
Let’s pray.
Good morning, Family.
The year was 1965, the date was Thursday, December 9. I was just a little girl, and I don’t remember if I actually saw it, but that was the night A Charlie Brown Christmas aired for the very first time on CBS at 7:30 p.m. It was watched by 16 million people, almost half the country’s televisions at that time. And for decades after that, this 30-minute Christmas special became the unofficial start of the season. At least it did for me.
When it came on each year, it was like the ball drop on New Year’s Eve, the signal that Christmas time was finally here. It became a tradition, a moment of nostalgia, something many of us shared with our children, our grandchildren, our nieces and nephews. But have you ever watched A Charlie Brown Christmas again through adult eyes?
As a kid, I remember it being warm and joyful—a holiday story with great music and a few laughs. Snoopy was my favorite, and to this day, I have quite a collection of Snoopy and Peanuts memorabilia. But when you watch A Charlie Brown Christmas fresh with adult eyes, you begin to see something much deeper. The message the creator Charles M. Schulz was trying to convey in the mid-60s, drawing on his own Christian faith, speaks to something deeply and profoundly human.
Right from the opening scene, even before the title comes up, we see and hear Charlie Brown wrestling with something. Listen to what Charlie Brown says, and notice his facial expressions, which are just as telling. Charlie Brown Clip
Isn’t it something how a simple cartoon can hold so much truth? Watching that scene as a child, you don’t catch the weight of it. But as adults, as life happens and experiences accumulate, we begin to see ourselves in Charlie Brown. Because what he names in that moment is something we don’t often say out loud: that even in a season filled with beauty and light, we can still feel like something is missing.
A sense that something inside us is just a bit off. Some degree of heaviness or sadness we can’t quite explain and may seek to push aside. A longing for something in our hearts that we may not even be fully aware of.
Well, today is the first Sunday of Advent, and Advent speaks to longing. For many of us, when we hear the word Advent, we think of Christmas—and the two are certainly connected—but they are not the same. Advent means “coming.” Advent is the season before the celebration. It’s the season of anticipation and waiting for Jesus to come as Emmanuel.
And the waiting of Advent is a season of longing—longing for God to come, Immanuel; longing for God’s promises to manifest; longing for joy to the world. Advent is not about pretending that all is right with the world, merry and bright. In fact, Advent is a space to be brutally honest—honest just like Charlie Brown—because honesty opens hearts. It creates room within us for God to meet us in the waiting and to speak into our longings.
Longings, in fact, that God has been speaking into for centuries. Which leads us to our scripture passage for this morning and an invitation.
“Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink… even if you have no money! Come, take your choice of wine or milk, it’s all free! Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength? Why pay for food that does you no good? Listen to me, and you will eat what is good; you will enjoy the finest food. Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life. I will make an everlasting covenant with you. I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to David.” (Isaiah 55:1–3)
Unpacking the Story
Our passage from the book of Isaiah was written in the 6th century BC to the children of Israel in Babylonian captivity, after they were overtaken and captured following the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC. They were far from their homeland, far from the Temple, and far from everything that once centered them in God.
They were in exile because of the choices they made over and over again. Over time, they began to trust in other forms of security—political alliances, cultural pressures, their own strength—and refused to heed the warnings of the prophets who kept calling them to turn back to God and God’s ways.
Simply put, they had drifted far from God. And now they were living with the consequences of that drift. They were living in the pain of their disconnection from God, and their rebellion had spiritual hunger that had caught up with them. And in that reality, there was a longing. A longing for something more, for something better, for something to be restored and made whole again. A longing they perhaps couldn’t quite name, but a longing God understood completely.
And it is to that longing that Isaiah speaks for God. He writes: “Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink even if you have no money! Come, take your choice of wine or milk—it’s all free!”
Through the words of Isaiah, God begins by naming their condition—they are thirsty, hungry, empty—and God’s response is a startling invitation.
Although we only read the first three verses of this chapter today, the opening seven verses include twelve imperatives with the same message and intention—twelve invitations from the heart of God. Speaking for God, Isaiah writes: “Come to the waters… Come, buy and eat… Come, buy wine and milk without money… Listen carefully to Me… Incline your ear… Hear Me… Seek the Lord while He may be found… Call upon Him… Return to the Lord…”
Do you hear the theme in these invitations? The earnest intensity? A repeated reaching out—almost pleading. It is the voice of a God who longs for us and refuses to leave us in our emptiness, in our longings.
And God is not talking about literal water, milk, wine, or money here. He is speaking metaphorically, but he is pointing to something very real. In this passage, God invites the thirsty to come to the waters, which represent life itself. He says come, buy milk and wine, even if you have no money. Milk is about nourishment and strength. Wine is about joy, delight, and celebration.
And here’s the incredible gift—God says it’s all free, without cost. God is offering His bountiful grace. It is the promise of abundant life—the same promise Jesus makes later while on earth. A promise of wholeness and fullness that touches the spiritual, the emotional, and even the physical for those who accept the invitation and seek to live in alignment with God.
God was extending an invitation to the abundant life of being connected with God and living into the fullness of His presence. That’s what the text meant to the original hearers and what it means to us, too.
Because while we may not be in exile, the longings God is appealing to in Isaiah’s readers are not unfamiliar to us.
Our Longings
Longing is part of being human—ever since the first disruption in the Garden of Eden, which initiated the breach between God and us, longing has been part of the human condition. A longing to repair what is broken. A longing to heal what’s missing. A longing that speaks of how things were supposed to be before the world became broken.
Sometimes we feel the longing clearly: longing for peace in the middle of chaos, longing for healing where there is still pain, longing for clarity when the future feels fuzzy, longing for joy when joy seems far away.
And sometimes longing shows up in more subtle ways—a longing to feel cared for rather than always being the one who cares, a longing to feel significant and know your life really matters, a longing to feel truly connected rather than on the sidelines or alone.
And sometimes the longing is not just about us. A longing for someone we love to be okay and whole, a longing for unity where there is painful division, or a longing for justice in places where harm has been done.
Now, here is something essential to understand and remember. Longing doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong or bad. Often, longing points to something true: something deep within us that longs for what it’s supposed to be. A glimpse of God’s intention for the world. A glimpse of a Kingdom reality. Something God wants, too.
And Advent, the season we step into today, speaks exactly to this truth because, as I said earlier, Advent is all about longing—the longing for God to be with us, the longing for God to make things right, the longing for God to draw near and do what only God can do.
That’s why the next verse in our Isaiah passage is so pivotal and critical to this reality of longing. Right after God invites His people to come and listen, He says: “And you will find life! I will make an everlasting covenant with you. I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to David.”
Did you catch the flow of what’s happening in this passage? God acknowledges their metaphorical hunger and thirst and extends the invitation to come, eat, listen, and seek. He is offering the answer to their longings—and in a phrase, that answer is God’s love. His faithful, steadfast, and everlasting love is the answer to their and our deepest longings.
It’s from that place of love that God invites us to come, drink, and live abundantly, for free. And when we do, He meets our longings in many ways—sometimes directly by drawing near in His presence, sometimes through the love and care of others, sometimes through slow healing over time and His comfort, sometimes by reminding us of who and whose we are, sometimes by reshaping our longings so we can see what our hearts are truly reaching for.
God’s love doesn’t bypass our longings. It holds and undergirds them because longing actually does something in us, if we allow it. It opens space in our hearts for God, who desires to draw near and respond to those longings.
That’s what Advent offers to us. It begins with the longing for Jesus to come because longing is a doorway that can open us to God and the hope God extends because of His love.
Hope
In other words, Advent doesn’t just leave us with longing in and of itself. The season of Advent leads us somewhere. Advent leads us toward hope.
Now, hope in Scripture—biblical hope—isn’t wishful thinking. It’s not wishing on a star or crossing our fingers. Hope is a choice to trust the character of God while we wait and long for what we may not yet see.
Psalm 130 is such a powerful companion verse to God’s invitation through Isaiah. It captures hope as a decision we make as we long and wait. It reads: “I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him. I have put my hope in his word. I long for the Lord more than watchmen long for the dawn, yes, more than watchmen long for the dawn. O Israel, hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is unfailing love.” (Psalm 130:5–7a)
This isn’t passive waiting. This is active trust—choosing, declaring, an intentional leaning toward God that says, “I will wait… I will watch… I will hope… because the God I’m hoping in is faithful, steadfast, and full of unfailing love.”
Hope in Scripture is always anchored in God’s character and God’s promises. Isaiah names God’s everlasting covenant of faithful love. And the psalmist calls it unfailing love. Both point to one truth: hope is rooted not in our circumstances but in the God who holds them in His love.
And here is where longing and hope meet. Longing tells us what we ache for. Hope tells us where to place that ache. In God’s hands. Longing reveals our hunger for something. Hope declares where our hunger is fed—from God’s abundant love. Longing opens our hearts. Hope anchors them in the very heart of God’s care for you and for me.
In fact, the hope Isaiah pointed toward—the hope the psalmist waited for—the hope our own hearts lean toward—is not a distant concept or theory. Hope came near. Hope put on flesh. Hope has a name, and His name is Jesus.
Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s covenant, the embodiment of God’s unfailing love, the One who meets us in our longings and holds us while we wait. Think about it this way: everything God promised through His everlasting covenant of love, He fulfilled in Jesus—love that did not stay distant but came to us in flesh and blood.
And this is where all our longings converge. Because in Jesus, every longing we carry is met—not always in the way we imagined and perhaps not in the timing we’d like—but always through the presence of the One who embodies God’s faithful love.
Think about it: in our longing for peace, Jesus is our peace. In our longing to feel cared for, Jesus carries what we can no longer hold. In our longing for significance, Jesus names us beloved. In our longing for connection, Jesus draws near and never lets us go. In our longing for justice, Jesus stands with the wounded and promises that harm will not have the final word.
Jesus doesn’t erase our longings. He inhabits them. He dignifies them. He transforms them with the kind of hope only God can give.
Now, hope doesn’t always come easily. It doesn’t always rush in with full power. Sometimes hope begins with the smallest spark of trust—a decision to lean on God even when we’re not sure how everything will unfold.
The truth is, hope is not passive. Hope is practiced. It grows as we keep choosing trust, as we keep opening our hearts, as we keep remembering God is present right here, right now, with a good plan in His time and in His way.
I’m reminded of a story of a woman—I’ll call her Jessica—who was in a season where her longing felt heavy. It was a longing for peace and strength and for something inside of her to come back to life. For a while, she said hope felt almost impossible. She didn’t know how to hope again, so she began practicing hope in the smallest way she could manage.
Each morning, before the day swept in, she lit a single candle. She kept it simple. She said there was no ritual, no pressure to feel anything. Just a quiet moment with a small flame before God and the words of Psalm 130: “I wait for the Lord… and in His word I put my hope.”
She said the candle reminded her that even when the light is small, light is still light. Even when hope flickers, hope is still hope. And God is present. Nothing in her circumstances changed immediately… but over time, something in her did. A small light came back on inside her. Her longing met hope.
Her story reminds us that sometimes hope begins quietly—with a flicker, a small act, a simple choosing. But hope is never meant to stay private. It grows, it steadies us, and then it gently turns us outward toward those who need hope too.
As hope grows in us, we begin to notice those around us who, like Charlie Brown, feel that something is off, something is missing. We can’t fix their longing. But we can hold hope with them. We can be the steady, compassionate presence that God has been for us.
In other words, hope received becomes hope offered. You know, there’s a passage in Corinthians where Paul encourages his listeners to comfort others with the comfort they themselves had received from Christ. Well, hope works the same way. The hope of Jesus, which extends to us and meets us in our longings, becomes the hope we can extend to someone else who needs it.
And our world is aching for hope, brothers and sisters, especially in this season of Advent. So, as we prepare to close, I want to invite you to join me in a simple prayer. A prayer that not only welcomes hope into our own lives but opens us to becoming instruments of hope for the people God will place in our path this week.
Lord, make me an instrument of Your hope. Where shadows linger, let me carry Your light. Where hearts grow weary, let me bear Your presence. Where the world feels heavy, let me reflect Your promise. Fill me, use me, send me—that Your hope may rise in me and reach through me to others. Amen.
Closing
Family, as we prepare to close, I keep thinking of Charlie Brown’s honest moment, his sense that something was missing, that longing he didn’t exactly know how to name. Isaiah knew that ache. And into that longing, he spoke God’s invitation: “Come… listen… seek me… and I will make with you an everlasting covenant—my faithful love.”
And this is exactly where Advent meets us—right in the middle of our longing, with the promise of a covenant love that draws near. And today we know that covenant love has a name. Jesus is our living hope. Hope that comes near and meets us where we are. Hope that holds our longings and hope that leads us gently forward into the loving care of our God.
And I don’t know exactly what the Spirit has been whispering to you this morning, but my prayer is that this becomes the beginning of a season where God speaks into your longing in real and tangible ways—and where the hope He stirs in you becomes hope you are able to extend to someone else this week.
May the hope of this season ignite in your heart and spread like fire.
Let’s pray.
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