Our theme for this first Sunday of Advent is Hope.

The darkness represented the hopelessness of how I felt about my life. But in the darkness, I was suddenly able to see, in the distance, a small glimmer of light, an opening out into daylight. That small patch of light was the promise – and the hope – that my time in the darkness was not the end of the story, that light and life awaited me. Hope can be powerful, and it was for me that day.