What is the color of Hope?

Is it, perhaps,  pink? I wonder, on a morning when skies all around me shine pink: north, south, east, west…

—when the air itself looks pink, in clouds skimming earth?

I think of this later, when a phrase rises from my Bible page—a series of phrases, really:

            “you… wait for His Son from heaven,

            whom He raised from the dead,

            even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Th 1:10).

They waited. In expectant hope. Souls glowing pink with hope.

And down through years, centuries, others have waited, in expectant hope.

And we wait…

Although we are a people not friendly toward waiting, who want it all now — or yesterday, whose patience tends toward short, and whose expectation rests too much on the concrete predictable.

Why didn’t He tell us When? When He would return. He said only the Father knew, but why didn’t the Father reveal it?

The first Advent candle people have called the candle of Hope. The second, the candle of Preparation. And what needs preparation more than our hearts? And how will that happen but for the quieting, the expectation settling hope in our hearts, the possibility warming our minds, that it could be in our lifetime?

Quieting today, in hope and expectation, thinking on His first Advent, looking toward His second, considering all those waiting together from first till second, down through decades and millennia. Waiting in pink expectant hope…

knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as [they were] from the beginning of creation.”

For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth…

But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day [is] as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord is not slack concerning [His] promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. 

Therefore, …what manner [of persons] ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,

looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God…?

…we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. 

Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless; 

and consider [that] the longsuffering of our Lord [is] salvation

-2 Peter 3:3-15

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For what [is] our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? [Is it] not even you in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming?

-1 Thessalonians 2:19

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