Some hopes are alive and well, while other hopes are not really hopes at all anymore. They're distant memories of a simpler, more naive season that gave way to cynicism and "reality".
But the birth of Christ, like the resurrection of Christ, point to the story not being over yet!
Thaw
- On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the need for hospitalization and 0 being completely chilled out, where are you with stress right now?
- Why?
- What causes or changes that, especially in December?
- How can this group help you or be helped by you?
- What stuck with you from Sunday?
Read
- Genesis 1:1-3
- Thoughts?
- How does this story speak to our individual lives beyond a telling of the origins of the universe?
Read
- Thoughts?
- 1 Corinthians 13:13
- Why are these three lumped together? What do they have to do with each other in the context of being a loving, healthy community?
Read
- 1 Peter 1:3
- Thoughts?
- What does Christ conquering death have to do with how we live our lives at work, as members of a family, a nation, how we handles things being difficult or seemingly impossible?
- Why do we separate issues and circumstances that apply to resurrection and hope, and those that are untouched and so require our worry, despair and giving up?
Discuss
- What are some of things that you have remained hopeful about in your life? What is it that works against this hope? How often do you pray about it and talk through it with others?
- What are some things that you used to hope for and stopped? What changed?
Leader note: It may be a childhood hope that parents would stay married, but ultimately didn't, or a death of a loved one. In these cases, hoping can sometimes turn into an unhealthy lack of acceptance in the grieving process. You may want to ask what good has come, or can potentially come, from things like this in the past that didn't go at all like they had wished. Not that the past can be changed, but how might we search for beauty in it. Ask questions like: How is God resurrecting the broken pieces? What have you learned from it? How can we find good in it, and use those circumstances to catalyze beauty in our own lives? What is that part of our story still trying to do positively if we'll let it?
- Considering what it was like to hope and wait on the other side of Jesus being born, what does the birth of Christ say to our sense of despair?
- In what ways do we feel attached to our cynicism and feel like despair is something to cling to?
Leader note: The idea here is an insistence to not get hurt or look like a naive idiot. We want to hope, but we won't because we're certain that it leaves us unnecessarily vulnerable for taking some kind of emotional, social, psychological hit. See if the group is willing to explore that part of the problem of hope is that it just feels childish. Remember, the Kingdom belongs in many respects to the mentality of children! (Matthew 19:14)
Apply
Chew on these ideas as a group:
- Hoping is an act of Creativity
- Hoping is an act of Love
- Hoping is not "Denial"
- Hoping makes your past your prologue.
- How can the group help you this December, and beyond, with nurturing even the smallest hope that the story isn't over yet?
Leader note: Remember, trying to fix or quote single Bible verses to people not willing yet to entertain hope is harmful and makes hope less appealing, as it will seem to be the currency of fools. Hoping with people is a gentle process of asking better questions with people about circumstances, and, as we will see in the next message, reminding people that they are more than the sum total of their pasts and regrets.
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