Advent & Money: Hope Never Fails

December has long been associated wiith the holiday season and one of the many shared traditions is that of Advent celebrated by most Christian denominations and perhaps celebrated by you in your home with or without religious connection. Advent calendars count the days down to Christmas by opening a door, drawer or box with a chocolate, small gift, a mini LEGO set or a beauty product. Advent is a time of anticipation, preparation and celebration culminating in the arrival or coming (the simple definition of the word advent) of Jesus.  Traditionally, advent is celebrated for the four Sundays that precede Christmas Day with each Sunday focusing on a different theme - Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. 

For this Advent Season I wish to reflect on these themes and their connection to money and our financial lives. May these reflections ellicit their theme within you and well as prepare you for the end of this year and the next. 

Hope Never Fails 

It is easy to be without hope. It is even easier when resources are low. Energy for the day, social stamina needed to relate to challenging people or low levels of financial resources tend not to engender extra optimism and overflowing hopefulness. 

And yet, we are left with a simple truth that hope never fails. How does it do this?

Of the 4 weeks of advent, Hope is the one that sees. It sees ahead. It sees what others do not. It anticipates. Perhaps this is why we begin farthest away from Christmas with Hope - we must see from a distance. Then we must choose how we are going to see and that is Hope. 

With money it can be quite hard. Money is tangible and real. We know what we earn and what expenses are there. Then we do the math as best we can and come to a number left over. Rarely does that spark hope and why 95% of us name money as our number one anxiety. It is limited. We seek out ways to make more and cut where can only to have the price of everything work against us. 

There’s just not much hope there. 

Then, we see everyone else doing better and the talking heads of the financial world shame us even more.

Perhaps we have not been looking and anticipating in the right direction and have only had eyes for what is not right. Hope sees. It sees something new on the horizon and chooses to move forward. For some that may be some new budgeting behaviors for the new year. That is well and good but Hope sees much further than you. 

Hope sees us. Hope sees a new possibility. Hope moves towards a new reality. “Hope makes all things work.” 

Hope is not optimism. Hope is active because it sees what is possible and then moves to make it happen. 

With money it is often that we exchange hope for money. Money seems like a proper substitute but it lacks the power to see. We put that power on money and look forward to see what we can and cannot do with our funds. Since money cannot see it makes us blind to what is truly possible with money. Our culture encourages this, having placed money in such high regard and making finance only a personal matter and not one of community significance. 

This pseudo hope that money is leads into narrow lanes of thought of what is possible. It leaves us alone. It leaves us with tiny visions and less than desirable stories for our life. 

Hoping in money has eliminated hope from our minds and made us feel hopeless. Hope never fails because it does not do that. 

This advent season there is a vision and an anticipation of a community response to our declining economic state that many are experiencing. It is seeing doing money together, not separate. If that sounds foreign that is because it is. Hope often is foreign - that is part of seeing something new. 

No one can do money alone. Hope shows us the way and I believe there is a much more exciting way that is showing itself to us.