12/02/2025
Advent’s First Lights: Hope, Peace, and Healing
Advent always begins with quiet.
Before the carols, before the candles, before the joyful noise of Christmas morning, we begin with a small flame in the darkness. It is a humble start — just one candle, just one spark of light — reminding us that God’s greatest work often begins in places that feel fragile.
This year, as we enter Advent, I’ve been paying attention to the land around us here in Sonoma: the cold mornings and mild afternoons, the shifting winds, the vineyards resting, the oak leaves turning brittle and brown. Creation itself seems to stand still for a moment, waiting — as if in this waiting, creation is keeping Advent with us.
The first candle, lit this past Sunday, is the candle of Hope. But hope in Scripture isn’t optimism or wishful thinking. It is trust that God is still at work even when we can’t see the full picture.
When Isaiah says the wilderness will rejoice and the desert will bloom, he is not looking at a landscape in full color. He is looking at a dry, weary world — and daring to believe God has not finished with it yet.
And isn’t that our world, too?
A planet warming, forests burning, oceans groaning, species disappearing — and yet, right alongside all that, we see seeds pushing through the soil, volunteers tending community gardens, people picking up trash along creeks and paths, , and neighbors choosing to live more gently on the earth. In these moments I think, Advent hope is alive.
United Methodists have a surprisingly long history of environmental hope:
~ In 1968, when The United Methodist Church was first formed, our earliest Social Principles spoke boldly about creation as “a sacred trust.”
~ In the 1970s and 80s, UMC camps and retreat centers began shifting toward conservation practices — long before “environmentalism” was mainstream.
~ And UMCOR has spent decades helping communities rebuild after natural disasters, always with careful attention to the soil, water, and long-term environmental health.
Hope is something we plant — sometimes literally — and trust God to grow. We may not see the fruits of the fertility, but we know that God is not done. We claim our agency to partner with God planting heaven on earth.
The second candle is the candle of Peace, and the world hungers for it.
But peace in the Bible is not just stillness or silence; it is shalom — restored relationships, repaired harm, and a life where everything and everyone can flourish.
Isaiah’s vision of turning swords into plowshares has become so familiar that its radical power can slip right past us. He imagines a world where the tools we once used to harm are reshaped into tools that nourish. In our time, that might look like:
Environmental peace is not separate from the peace we pray for in our hearts or in our communities. It is all one tapestry. When we heal the land, we heal ourselves. When we live more gently, we bless our neighbors. When we safeguard creation, we honor the God who breathed life into it.
This work, too, is part of our Methodist heritage:
~During the turmoil of the 1940s, Methodists formed the Methodist Peace Fellowship, insisting that Christians pursue reconciliation rather than violence.
~In the 1990s and 2000s, church leaders helped shape global conversations linking environmental protection with peacemaking — recognizing that communities without clean water or healthy land cannot thrive.
~And for generations, United Methodist congregations — including ours — have stood in public witness for peace, justice, and the care of creation.
Peace grows when we choose it again and again.
I sometimes imagine Advent as God leaning close and whispering, “Make room for something new.”
Make room in our schedules.
Make room in our spirits.
Make room in our lives for hope and peace to take root.
This Advent, perhaps making room also means noticing the earth beneath our feet.
Saying a prayer when we water a houseplant.
Choosing to walk instead of drive once a week.
Recycling that item we might have tossed.
Praying for communities harmed by climate disasters.
Planting something small as a sign that God is not done creating.
None of these acts may “fix” the world. But they form us. They align our hearts with God’s healing work. As we move through the first two weeks of Advent, may hope kindle in us like the first candle’s steady flame. May peace settle in us like a deep breath. And may Christ, who comes as the Prince of Peace, teach us again how to love this world — people, land, sky, water — the way God loves it.
Grace, Hope and Peace
Pastor M@
