Advent Discussions: Trevor Hudson

Join us each week of Advent as we share bonus content from friends of Dwell, each reflecting upon their own Advent journey and life with God in and through Scripture.

Week 1: Trevor Hudson

Trevor Hudson has been part of the Methodist movement for over 40 years. Serving primarily around Johannesburg, he is deeply committed to the work of spiritual formation within local congregational contexts. A significant part of his weekly work presently consists of leading people through the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius and offering spiritual direction. Besides his local commitments, Trevor travels widely, preaching and teaching. He lectures at Fuller Seminary, the Renovaré Institute, the Dallas Willard Center for Christian Spiritual Formation, and the Jesuit Institute in South Africa. He is the author of 17 books including Discovering Your Spiritual Identity (IVP) and Beyond Loneliness (Upper Room).

Hope as a Christian Virtue

A Daily Openness to the Coming of Christ

Meeting God in Advent Through the Dwell App

Bonus Audio Content:

The Universal Power of Hope

Transcript: Hope is a very human thing. I think it was Lewis Smedes, who was at Fuller, who once said that “hope is for the human spirit what oxygen is for the body.” That there’s a sense in which hope, at a human level, just at a human level, is a very, very powerful force in our lives. My mom often used to say to me, “Where there’s life, there’s hope,” and I’ve come to see and to believe that where there’s hope, there is life. Such is the power of hope in the human spirit.

The Painful Reality of Hope

Transcript: While hope is a very, very powerful thing, it is also a very painful thing. The reality of our context is that hopes, human hopes, get shattered. I think all of us, to some degree, are living with the pain of shattered hopes, and I think that’s a reality that we really need to face very honestly and not gloss over it in any way. I live in South Africa and we struggled to overcome apartheid. In 1994, we became a democracy and our hopes were really, really high for a new lease on national life. But there has been a sense in which many of those hopes have crashed, in terms of corrupt leadership, etc. And what happens at a national level also happens at a very, very personal level. We have hopes for relationships, we have hopes for a marriage, we have hopes for our work, and they can shatter.

But I think the one redemptive factor in a shattered hope is that it pushes us down, to go beyond human hoping, and to discover a divine hope in the God who does God’s best work on a cross. And so there is a sense in which the pain of shattered hopes pushes us down into the promises of our divine hope. So that’s the one thing I would like to say.

How to Remain Hopeful in a Time Like This

Transcript: I have found it very, very helpful just to keep a simple biblical image in my mind, a very simple biblical image that comes from Hebrews, where the writer to the Hebrews speaks of hope as an anchor, and I love that image. Hope as an anchor. The image that comes to mind is that an anchor sinks through into the very depths and into the very darkness of the ocean, it goes right down to the end of the rope, as it were. And there is a sense in which that image of an anchor dropping to the ground, to the bottom, is that God meets us at the bottom. God meets us, as it were, at the end of the rope. That is God’s meeting place for us, in terms of the Divine Presence breaking into our life in a real and deep way. I just find that image, just carrying that image around with me, very, very helpful.

The Wonder of the Incarnation

Transcript: The wonder of the Incarnation is that Christ continues to come to us in all things material, that that we live in a sacramental world, and that, as you know, Ephesians six, I think it’s verse ten, that his ascended presence fills the universe. And so he comes in all things. And so, I think Christmas invites me to wonder again about how Christ is coming to me today, in that which is ordinary, in that which is hidden, in that which is unspectacular, just like a manger. And so that helps me to live on tiptoe, and it begins to renew within my life a sense of wonder, of how is Christ meeting me, how is Christ going to come to me in the present moment of my life in terms of my relationships, my work, and my daily living?