Hope For Advent Quotes & Sayings

God of hope, I look to you with an open heart and yearning spirit. During this Advent season, I will keep alert and awake, listening for your word and keeping to your precepts. My hope is in you. — Matthew Kelly

I hope that, whatever happens within the publishing industry, because of the increased control writers have of their own careers, better sales information and the advent of the internet, that ultimately this change in our working environment will be a change for the better. — Sara Sheridan

Christmas is about the coming of the Son of Man who "came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." These words in Mark 10:45, as a brief expression of Christmas, are what I hope God will fix in your mind and heart this Advent. Open your heart to receive the best present imaginable: Jesus giving himself to die for you and to serve you all the rest of eternity. Receive this. Turn away from self-help and sin. Become like little children. Trust him. Trust him. Trust him with your life. — John Piper

love
is giving everything too easily
then staying to try and claw it back — Andrew McMillan

I'm not too keen on talking. I always have the feeling that the words are getting away from me, escaping and scattering. It's not to do with vocabulary or meanings, because I know quite a lot of words, but when I come out with them they get confused and scattered. That's why I avoid stories and speeches and just stick to answering the questions I'm asked. All the extra words, the overflow, I keep to myself, the words that I silently multiply to get close to the truth. — Delphine De Vigan

Enemies are just friends in reverse. — Gary Busey

The more deeply one enters into the experience of the sacred the more one is aware of one's own personal evil and the destructive forces in society. The fact that one is alive to what is possible for humankind sharpens one's sense that we are fallen people. The awareness of sin is the inevitable consequence of having met grace... This grace-judgment dynamic reveals that the center of Christian life is repentance. This does not mean that the distinguishing mark of the Christian is breast-beating. Feeling sorry, acknowledging guilt, and prolonging regret may be components of the human condition, but they are not what Jesus means by repentance. Repentance is the response to grace that overcomes the past and opens out to a new future. Repentance distinguishes Christian life as one of struggle and conversion and pervades it, not with remorse, but with hope. The message of Jesus is not "Repent," but "Repent for the Kingdom of God is near. — John Shea

Every year we celebrate the holy season of Advent, O God. Every year we pray those beautiful prayers of longing and waiting, and sing those lovely songs of hope and promise. — Karl Rahner

The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism. The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism. — Dennis Prager

New EU embassies lack the expertise in the field of culture and given the budget cuts in all Member States it is important to confront this challenge together. — Pierre Vimont

Advent's intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope. The purpose of the Church's year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart's memory so that it can discern the star of hope ... — Pope Benedict XVI

The word advent means "expectation." What advent can do for us is create a sense of hope. — Louie Giglio

Thus says the Lord: the meaning of Christmas is that what is good and precious in your life need never be lost, and what is evil and undesirable in your life can be changed. The fears that the few good things that make you happy are slipping through your fingers, and the frustrations that the bad things you hate about yourself or your situation can't be changed - these fears and these frustrations are what Christmas came to destroy. It is God's message of hope this Advent that what is good need never be lost and what is bad can be changed. — John Piper

Let the winds come from the sea and blow seeds about, seeds of the north, south, east, and west. Let the moths beat their wings against the windows and the fishermen cast curious glances. Let them come, let them return, let them reach. — Margaret Cezair-Thompson

Ethan Wyeth: I hope you're thirsty."
Gideon Wyeth:"Why?"
Ethan: "Cause your dumb and ugly, but I can do something about thirsty. — Orson Scott Card

Epaminondas himself fell in the moment of victory, and in his death contributed not the least of his lessons to subsequent generations-by an exceptionally dramatic and convincing proof that an army and a state succumb quickest to paralysis of the brain. — B.H. Liddell Hart

If we topple [Bashar] Assad, the result will be ISIS will take over Syria, and it will worsen U.S. national security interests. — Ted Cruz

It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope. — Pope Benedict XVI

Advent increases our hope, a hope which does not disappoint. The Lord never lets us down. — Pope Francis

Once again we mark the arrival of Advent. This holy season trumpets God's extravagant love for us, a love beyond reckoning. Into our beautiful yet wounded world comes Emmanuel, God-with-us, carrying the promise of fresh hope to enliven our hearts. No matter how broken or seemingly hopeless our world may sometimes seem, the Advent messages are rich with joyous expectation and longing, insisting that God can and does bring forth life where none seems possible. — Sr. Chris Koellhoffer IHM

If God hadn't meant us to hunt men, he wouldn't have given us Wonder Bras. — Kathy Lette

To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our belief. — Thomas Browne

If the years have taught me one thing it's that those who care are always scarce. Those who genuinely care; not the acquaintances, false friends or those with similar aspirations. The few who seek your company, the souls who would plainly step off the world for you. Once you resolve to ignore them, only regret will follow. — Darrell Drake

My objective is that before the end of the millennium Europe should have a true federation. The Commission should become a political executive which can define essential common interests ... responsible before the European Parliament and before the nation-states represented how you will, by the European Council or by a second chamber of national parliaments. — Jacques Delors

Here's an Advent illustration for kids - and those of us who used to be kids and remember what it was like. Suppose you and your mom get separated in the grocery store, and you start to get scared and panic and don't know which way to go, and you run to the end of an aisle, and just before you start to cry, you see a shadow on the floor at the end of the aisle that looks just like your mom. It makes you really happy and you feel hope. But which is better? The happiness of seeing the shadow, or having your mom step around the corner and it's really her?

That's the way it is when Jesus comes to be our High Priest. That's what Christmas is. Christmas is the replacement of shadows with the real thing. — John Piper

Then, were not summer's distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet. — William Shakespeare

I can't- we can't do that."
"But you'll play strip poker with strangers?" He seemed to be studying me very closely.
"Well, yeah-" this was a strange conversation to be having as I was speaking both in the theoretical and the literal. Theoretically, I'd play strip poker with strangers, depending on the circumstances and the strangers, but I had no literal intention of doing so.
Quinn quickly countered, "And if I happened to be playing poker- strip poker- at the only table in the casino, would you still play?"
I hesitated, feeling like I was being led into a trap that involved Quinn getting naked ... which actually sounded really nice. I reluctantly said, "No."
"Why?"
"Because ... I- you're you." I congratulated myself for not slurring the words even as sweat was beading on my chest and upper back. — Penny Reid

Advent means "coming." Note that it is an action in progress, an act not yet accomplished, one we look forward to with renewed hope. Therefore, it is a time of expectation and preparation. It is a time of waiting and watching, of preparing our hearts and minds for the coming of Jesus Christ. — Nan Lewis Doerr

I can't live without mousse. When my hair is damp I put it at the roots. When I blow dry my hair it makes it so much bouncier. It gives you shampoo commercial hair and makes your blowout so much better. — Shay Mitchell

Paul gives us an astonishing understanding of waiting in the New Testament book of Romans, as rendered by Eugene Peterson, 'Waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.' With such motivation, we can wait as we sense God is indeed with us, and at work within us, as he was with Mary as the child within her grew. — Luci Shaw

You know it with startling clarity in that moment - how there's only a singular cord in this knotted mess of a world worth reaching for. It's dangling right there from our impossible tangle, and it's the one hope you need to reach for this Advent. That scarlet lifeline of Christ. — Ann Voskamp

Advent Prayer
In our secret yearnings
we wait for your coming,
and in our grinding despair
we doubt that you will.
And in this privileged place
we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we
and by those who despair more deeply than do we.
Look upon your church and its pastors
in this season of hope
which runs so quickly to fatigue
and in this season of yearning
which becomes so easily quarrelsome.
Give us the grace and the impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edges of our fingertips.
We do not want our several worlds to end.
Come in your power
and come in your weakness
in any case
and make all things new.
Amen. — Walter Brueggemann

Advent is the spiritual season of hope par excellence, and in this season the whole Church is called to be hope, for itself and for the world. — Pope Benedict XVI

Let us hope that the advent of a successful flying machine, now only dimly foreseen and nevertheless thought to be possible, will bring nothing but good into the world; that it shall abridge distance, make all parts of the globe accessible, bring men into closer relation with each other, advance civilization, and hasten the promised era in which there shall be nothing but peace and goodwill among all men. — Octave Chanute

Thus even though Christians are already saved, they still await the fullness of their salvation. Paul sees our salvation as both present and future, as both a now and a not-yet experience. In short, whatever blessings we have here and now will multiply when the fullness of time finally arrives and God brings the plan (mystery, verses 9, 10) that He developed "before the foundation of the world" (verse 4) to its climax. The problems that we face as Christians here on earth will not always be. No wonder Paul refers to the Second Advent as the "blessed hope" (Titus 2:13). — George R. Knight

Anticipation lifts the heart. Desire is created to be fulfilled - perhaps not all at once, more likely in slow stages. Isaiah uttered his prophetic words about the renewal of the natural Creation into a wilderness of spiritual barrenness and thirst. For him, and for many other Old Testament seers, the vacuum of dry indifference into which he spoke was not yet a place of fulfillment. Yet the promise of God through this human mouthpiece (and the word "promise" always holds a kind of certainty) was verdant with hope, a kind of greenness and glory. A softening of hard-heartedness, a lively expectation, would herald the coming of Messiah. And once again, in this season of Advent, the same promise for the same Anointed One is coming closer. — Luci Shaw

Eid is a time of joy, after a season of fasting and prayer and reflection. Each year, the end of Ramadan means celebration and thanksgiving for millions of Americans. And your joy during this season enriches the life of our great country. This year, Eid is celebrated at the same time as Hanukkah and Advent. So it's a good time for people of these great faiths, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, to remember how much we have in common: devotion to family, a commitment to care for those in need, a belief in God and His justice, and the hope for peace on earth. — George W. Bush