Hope's Hero

Day 11 of Advent

Reading today the story of Joseph being sold into slavery, of his fall from grace in Potiphar's household and of his interpreter’s successes in prison.  Added to this I read from Hass’, What Light Can Do, and his essay on Russian writer Chekhov.  Chekhov’s writings always confront the reader with the irony between the realism of the brokenness of our lives and the hope we always desire.  In the essay Hass writes these two wonderful lines concerning a short story Chekhov wrote about a young man, Peter, who is confronted by this problem with realism and hope, “like a woodpile rotting in a forest” and “…Peter is also depressed because if such a world were possible, he would not be heroic enough to live in it.”  There has only been one human heroic enough to live hopefully in this world and it wasn’t Joseph or Peter.  Advent celebrates the arrival of that Person.  The great joy of Advent is the reality of Him being with us and in us, which allows us the hope to live heroically in the same world Joseph, Peter and we find ourselves in, where hope always trumps realism because The Hero is with us.