2025.12.07 | When We're Running Out of Hope, God Is There

When We're Running Out of Hope, God is at Work
Isaiah 43:16–21

Preached by 
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser 
Eden United Church of Christ  
Hayward, CA 
07 December 2025

Beloved, Advent is the season when we dare to say that God is doing a new thing, even when we can’t quite perceive it just yet. Isaiah speaks to a people who knew what it was to run low on hope. They remembered the old stories of God making a way through the sea, crushing the armies of the Egyptian Empire, leading the people out from bondage. But now, centuries later, they find themselves in exile, no doubt beaten up, both physically and spiritually. Now those miracles of old, the in-breaking of God, feel far away. The prophet spoke to a community running out of hope, and if we’re honest, that’s not far from where many of us stand today, simply exhausted, and it’s not yet been a year into this new term of tyranny.

And into that exhaustion, God says, “Do not remember the former things… I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth—do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

Notice that shift. The old story was a path through the sea; now it’s a path through the wilderness. The old story was just enough water to survive; now it is rivers flowing where rivers are not supposed to flow.

We expect God’s in-breaking to follow past experience, but often God answers in ways that might be hard to recognize or even confound. God is saying: “I am not limited to your memories of how I have saved you before.” God can do something new, and often does it right in the places where hope feels thinnest. 

And juxtaposed to this hopeful promise, also stands a present truth: the empire is still intact. Herod still reigns. Advent meets us in real times and places, not just the imagined or ideal ones.

But there is hope in that. God’s new thing doesn’t begin after the systems change. It begins in the middle of them, when things fall apart. 

Hope in the Gospel is not founded on good outcomes or quick victories.
Hope is rooted in trusting that God is at work even when nothing seems immediately different. Even when prophets perish. Even when our neighborhoods still feel the weight of detention, exclusion, and scarcity. When peace is still awaiting justice. 

Queridos hermanos, el Adviento nos invita a confiar en que Dios está haciendo algo nuevo, incluso cuando aún no podemos verlo. Isaías habló a un pueblo cansado y exiliado, con la esperanza casi agotada. Los milagros del pasado parecían lejanos, y sin embargo, Dios dijo: «He aquí que hago algo nuevo… Abriré camino en el desierto y ríos en la soledad». La obra salvadora de Dios no siempre se manifiesta de la misma manera. A menudo surge precisamente donde la esperanza parece más débil. Y el Adviento nos encuentra en esa tensión: el imperio sigue intacto, Herodes aún reina, y sin embargo, Dios ya está actuando.

Nuestra esperanza no reside en victorias rápidas, sino en confiar en que Dios está obrando, incluso cuando nada parece cambiar, incluso cuando la justicia parece demorarse. Esta es la audaz esperanza del Adviento.

Here at Eden Church, we know this terrain, we understand something about wilderness, unincorporated places. And we understand the vocation of being repairers in the breach, while things are breaking still. 

When ICE shows up at our schools, fear wells up in community, and yet, in that same moment, God is quietly making a way, staff and attorneys rushing in to help, neighbors show up to verification trainings, like the one we’re co-hosting at Pampas Café beside Trader Joe’s this Tuesday evening at 7pm, all the while knowing that policies will not change over night, or even next year. 

When funding for our community programs becomes uncertain, it can feel like we’re wandering again and wondering how we’ll make it through this season. And yet, in that same wilderness, God stirs generosity in unexpected places, like the 23 first-time donors that gave on Giving Tuesday. Congregations reach out. Anonymous donors activate. People say, “We believe in this work, keep going.” A community refusing to abandon one another.

And yet, as former Pacific School of Religion professor Boyung Lee reminds us, hope can still wane thin. Activists, organizers, and changemakers of many professions working for justice and a better world know this moment. The fear that nothing systematically has changed or might still. “The grief that our efforts might not have mattered. The silence from systems we hoped would transform.” Will peace prevail? 

And yet this is exactly where Advent speaks. Lee asserts that Advent does not ask us to manufacture optimism. It does not say, “Pretend everything is fine.” It simply invites us to bring our emptied hope to Jesus. To ask the hard questions. To look again for signs of God’s nearness.

God says through Isaiah: “I am doing a new thing… now it springs forth—do you not perceive it?”

So maybe the question for us this morning is: What do you see?
What do you hear? Where are the small, stubborn signs of God’s new thing emerging?

When families line up at Comida para Cherryland like they will this coming Wednesday, some running out of food, some running out of strength, some running out of hope… and yet, right there—where scarcity should be the headline—God pours out rivers in the food desert: boxes overflowing, volunteers showing, youth helping elders, elders helping youth. This Wednesday we’ll have in addition to 300 whole chickens, children’s books and knitted hats and scarves thanks to our local co-conspirators of hope, Barbara Heimowitz and friends of the local synagogue, Shir Ami. 

Beloved, hope is not necessarily what we feel before God acts. Hope is what rises because God is already acting. Maybe such a sign then is a community that keeps showing up even when the news is discouraging, even when hope feels thin. That’s a prerequisite for peace.

Aquí en la Iglesia Eden, conocemos la realidad de los momentos difíciles y el trabajo de reconstrucción mientras las cosas aún se desmoronan, pero incluso en medio del miedo y la incertidumbre —cuando el ICE llega a nuestras escuelas o la financiación flaquea— Dios sigue abriendo camino: los vecinos se presentan, la generosidad florece y la comunidad se niega a abandonarse mutuamente. Aun así, la esperanza puede menguar, pero el Adviento nos encuentra allí, no pidiendo un optimismo falso, sino invitándonos a llevar nuestra esperanza agotada a Jesús y a buscar de nuevo señales de la cercanía de Dios. Isaías declara: «Estoy haciendo algo nuevo», y vemos destellos de ello en Comida para Cherryland, donde la escasez debería prevalecer, pero la abundancia se desborda: comida, voluntarios, jóvenes y ancianos compartiendo fuerzas, dones ofrecidos por cómplices de la esperanza. La esperanza surge porque Dios ya está actuando, abriendo caminos donde vemos barreras y proveyendo donde nos sentimos desamparados, sembrando valentía donde el miedo echa raíces e imaginando nuevos comienzos donde vemos finales. Quienes antes vagaban sin rumbo se convierten en testigos: «Dios nos abrió un camino». Así que, en este Adviento, que podamos reconocer dónde Dios está abriendo camino en nuestras vidas, incluso ahora, y confiar en que algo nuevo ya está brotando, guiándonos hacia la paz, la justicia y la alegría.

Beloved, if you feel like you’re running out of hope, take heart.
This might be the perfect moment for God to begin something new.
Not because everything around you has changed, but because God is already at work in the very places that wear us down. And as Boyung Lee reminds us, “hope that trembles is still hope.”

Isaiah says the “former things” are not enough to carry us now.
Not because those memories are unimportant, but because God is not done with us. God is not simply recycling old miracles. God is about creating new ones.

And this new thing God promises is not just survival. It’s not just scraping by, not just the production of water at Marah. It is full-fledged  rivers—abundant, life-giving water—flowing in places that once felt barren.

This is the promise for Eden Church today:
Where we see barriers, God is carving pathways.
Where we feel stretched thin, God is pouring out provision.
Where fear tries to take root, God plants courage and community.
Where we imagine an ending, God imagines a new beginning

At the end of today’s passage, God says: “The people whom I formed for myself will declare my praise.”

In other words: The people who once wandered will become people who witness. The ones who thought they had nothing left will become the ones who testify: “God made a way for us. God was at work even when we could not see it.” 

What is it that you are witnessing to this Advent season? Where has God made a way in your life when you felt there was no way? Hold onto that and cherish it, and rest assured that God can do even grander things than that yet. 

May we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts open enough to trust that even now, even here, something new is springing forth. Individually and collectively, moving us toward peace, in justice and joy. Amen.