Festival of Hope 2026 1: Exploring Hope

A World at the Edge of Midnight

We're thinking about hope. I want to start with some history from after World War II. Scientists involved in the invention of the atomic bomb were worried they had created something that could end the world. They started a journal called the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and created a symbolic clock to represent humanity's proximity to destruction.

On the front cover of their journal sits this clock—the last fifteen minutes before midnight. Midnight represents the destruction of the human race, the end of the world as we know it. They placed the minute hand where they felt the world stood in relation to that catastrophe.

The Doomsday Clock Through the Years

In 1947, they set the clock at seven minutes to midnight. Over the next eighty years, the clock's position has fluctuated. Scientists have expanded their measurements to include climate change, emerging technologies, and bio threats.

In 2018, they moved it to two minutes to midnight—closer than ever before in the bulletin's history. By 2020, it was at one hundred seconds. In 2023, ninety seconds. In 2025, eighty-nine seconds. At the end of January, they announced they were moving it to eighty-five seconds to midnight. This is the closest they have ever set it in eighty years.

When that announcement came, I wasn't surprised. We feel this. The world is not a good place, and it feels like it's getting worse.

Darkness in Our World and Our Lives

You could probably name things that have improved. But your gut feeling—the feeling in your bones—is that things are getting worse. More scary. Less just. More abuse. War. Inequality. Famine. Discrimination. Systemic oppression.

We don't just see this in the news. We feel it personally. Some of us are thriving. Others of us look at our lives or the lives of those around us and feel like things are getting closer to midnight. Illness. Bereavement. Mental health struggles. Discrimination. Things not being as they should be. There are people in this room carrying pain and trauma that feels particularly heavy tonight.

It's dark.

The Struggle to Hope

Some of us instinctively know that hope and positive thinking are good. Living without hope is hard. We want hope. So we work for it. We put in effort to sustain hope—through affirmations, gratitude, embracing positive thinking. We do what we can to stay hopeful.

But sometimes it feels like hard work. It takes effort just to keep hope going, swimming against the endless tide of news and headlines to stay positive. Sometimes we ignore the world, look away from what's really happening, just to try and keep hope alive.

Maintaining hope sometimes means fighting what feels true about the world. And the world keeps fighting back with bigger punches while we feel weaker and weaker. Maybe hope pinned to things that let us down is itself futile.

If maintaining hope means ignoring reality, denying the darkness, then perhaps hope itself is naive. Maybe instead we should just accept—accept that the clock is eighty-five seconds to midnight, that this is how it is, and learn to live with it.

So how do we approach the world? Do we stare at the darkness and accept it? Or do we fight back, maybe futilely, maybe naively, ignoring the darkness and giving what strength we have to keep hope going?

The Hope That Jesus Offers

My conviction as a Christian—and what I want us to think about this evening—is that hope is possible. It is possible to have real hope in the face of our dark world that isn't naive or futile, that doesn't require us to delude ourselves. It's possible to have a hope that one day things will get better, that light will come, the clock will go back—and to have that hope change how we live today.

The message of Jesus and the Bible says two crucial things into this conversation:

First, this is not how things should be. The world should not be full of selfishness, sickness, and death.

Second, this is not how things will be forever. The world will be put right, and we can be certain of that.

Light Breaking Into Darkness

Listen to these words from the book of Isaiah, chapter 9, verse 2:

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of darkness, a light has dawned.

Do you remember how darkness felt as a child? Waking up in pitch black. You could see nothing. You were frightened almost immediately. The dark was oppressive—you were scared, not knowing what would happen, not knowing what was hiding in the dark.

The Bible is honest that this is what life is often like in our dark world. There are countless stories in Scripture of the deepest darkness humans are capable of.

But imagine again: you're that child in that dark bedroom. Suddenly a crack of light comes in under the door. Then you remember. You know where you are. You can see. You know you're not alone. You know nothing's hiding in the gloom. You're safe. You're at home. It's okay. Someone is coming.

That's what Isaiah is talking about.

Isaiah wrote these words around 700 BC to an oppressed people living in Judah. It's part of a prophecy from God delivered through the prophet Isaiah. His message: someone was coming who would bring light to the darkness, like that light at the end of a long terrifying night.

Isaiah describes this person further:

He will be called the wonderful counselor, mighty God's everlasting father, prince of peace.

He's saying that the person who will come and bring light to the darkness will be God himself.

The Reality of God

The Bible says there is hope for us and this world because God is real. A God who created this world, who is mighty and powerful enough to change things. A wonderful counselor. A mighty God. An everlasting father. A prince of peace. He cares about us. He hates injustice, death, and darkness. He cares about our pain.

But someone might ask: That's a nice idea, Nick. But looking at the world as it is, how do I know it's true? Isn't this just naive, futile hope too?

God Shows Himself

What if God had revealed himself and shown us who he really is?

Isaiah was saying that God cares so much he was going to come and show up as a human being to bring light into the dark. And two thousand years ago, he really did it. He came in the person of Jesus from Nazareth.

Jesus—a man born in an obscure town in the north of Israel, executed in his thirties. He is the wonderful counselor, the prince of peace, the mighty God himself, the light in the darkness.

Don't just believe me because I'm saying it. Let's look together at some evidence. On your tables you have copies of Luke's Gospel—a historical biography of Jesus written by Luke, a doctor. He interviewed eyewitnesses to what Jesus said and did, and wrote it down around AD 60, just thirty years after these events.

The Story of Jairus's Daughter

Let's look at one day—potentially just a few hours—of Jesus's life, and see how Jesus brings light to darkness in people's lives.

Luke 8:41 begins:

Then a man named Jairus, a synagogue leader, came and fell at Jesus' feet, pleading with him to come to his house because his only daughter, a girl of about 12, was dying.

There is nothing—potentially nothing—more agonizing, more dark than a parent losing a child. Jairus's little girl is dying. There's nothing he can do. He's desperate. He throws himself at the feet of Jesus and begs for his help. Jesus says yes, and they set out.

But then Jesus gets delayed. Look at verse 42:

As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. And a woman was there who'd been subject to bleeding for 12 years, but no one could heal her.

A woman with an issue of blood for twelve years. She would have been in almost constant pain. Culturally, it meant she was ostracized—unable to participate in religious and community life. Twelve years of suffering. Twelve years of no one being able to help. Twelve years of getting hopes raised, visiting a new doctor, then facing crushing disappointment. Twelve years of hope dying.

She reaches out and touches Jesus's cloak:

And immediately her bleeding stopped.

Jesus asks, "Who touched me?" His disciples protest: "Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you." But Jesus responds:

Someone touched me. I know the power has gone out from me.

Jesus stops. There's a massive crowd crushing him, jostling, bumping everywhere. But in the busyness and noise, Jesus felt this woman in need reach out to him. The God of the universe felt her touch.

The woman, realizing she cannot go unnoticed, comes trembling and falls at his feet. She tells him why she touched him and how she had been instantly healed. And Jesus says:

Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.

The bleeding that had ruined and dominated her life for so long stopped. Jesus had ended her darkness.

The Darkest Moment

Imagine Jairus watching this happen. Every minute counts. Your daughter's life depends on it. This man Jesus who has done this is your last hope. So they set off again to his house.

But before they get there, Jairus hears the words every parent dreads:

Your daughter is dead. Don't bother the teacher anymore.

I can't imagine what that moment must have been like for Jairus. It's hard to think of a darker possible thing to experience.

But look at what Jesus says:

Don't be afraid. Just believe and she will be healed.

What a thing to say. This isn't the time for games or empty statements. On the surface, Jesus's reply seems insensitive. If the hope he's offering is false, what he said is unimaginably cruel. If it's true hope—solid hope—then it might be the best news Jairus has ever heard.

Which will it be? What kind of person is Jesus?

Light Rushes In

When Jesus arrived at the house, he took only Peter, John, James, and the child's parents inside. Everyone else was wailing and mourning. Jesus said:

Stop wailing. She is not dead, but asleep.

They laughed at him, knowing she was dead. But he took her by the hand and said:

My child, get up.

Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up. Jesus told them to give her something to eat. Her parents were astonished.

Jesus raised this child from the dead as easily as we might wake someone from sleep. Jesus spoke into this darkest of moments and suddenly light rushed in.

The hope he gave Jairus in that moment was not false. It wasn't cruel. It wasn't naive. It was solid and real.

Who is Jesus? He's not just a teacher. He's not just a nice man. If the story is true, he has the power to turn grief into joy, to bring life out of death. He can't be just a human being. Humans don't do this. He must be God. The one promised by Isaiah.

Which means God is real. And if this is what that real God is like—that's hope.

The Promise of the Future

Luke is writing this biography because he's been convinced by the evidence that Jesus really is God showing up in this world—the creator of the universe coming as a human being to put things right.

Signs Pointing to a New Creation

Jesus called his miracles signs. They're like signposts. They climax in his own death and resurrection—going through the darkest of nights into glorious light.

These miracles point to two things:

1. They point to who Jesus really was
2. They point to what he will do in the future

Jesus said that one day he would come to earth again. And when he does, everything he did on a local, individual, personal level two thousand years ago, he will do on a global, cosmic level.

The healing of this woman. The raising of this little girl. They're like a thumbnail preview, a taster of an entirely new world that Jesus is going to bring about. A healed world. A world of no more chaos, no death, no mourning or crying or pain.

That's what Jesus is about.

Hope as a Weapon Against Darkness

And that picture of the future—that solid hope of the future—makes so much difference right now.

Rebellions are built on hope. The thing that enables people to change the world or even just face each day is the hope that one day things might be better. Hope itself is a weapon to defeat the darkness.

In my work with university students, I have the privilege of walking with people through the darkness of their lives. Since June, there have been bereavements and extreme mental health struggles, long-term sickness, financial struggles. It is sad and often heavy.

One of the joys of my job is seeing how knowing Jesus, knowing this God, gives people the hope to face it. Watching Jesus make a difference. Changing them. Helping them keep going. Giving them light to rebel against the darkness.

Jesus is a hope that changes today.

The Only Real Hope

Without a God and without a God like this, it's hard to hold on to hope without it seeming futile. Without this kind of divine intervention, it's hard to see what will stop that doomsday clock.

But if this is true—if Jesus really is who he claimed to be—there is a way to look darkness in the face and still have hope.

A hope that is not abstract or wishful thinking, but a person we can trust. A person we can investigate. A person who looks us in the eye and takes our hand. A hope that isn't naive or futile. That isn't based on ignoring reality, but is actually a response to the deepest truths about the universe and the person who created it.

So hope isn't something that takes strength. It's something that gives strength.

And Jesus stands with his hands outstretched, inviting each one of us to come to him and experience that hope for ourselves.