1. The scripture passage today, the first of the church calendar’s year, was Isaiah 2:1-5. Here’s the version Cole read from the NLT: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%202%3A1-5&version=NLT 

Re-read or review this passage as a group. What does it tend to evoke in you? Prior to Cole’s teaching today, what has this passage generally communicated to you (if it’s one with which you’re familiar)?

Cole talked about two common interpretations: one centered on the idea that a baby can save us all. The other generally conveys the idea that someday humans will step aside and God will fix everything. How close are these interpretations to what you have tended to think this passage is communicating? How did they differ? 

How do these interpretations strike you? In what ways do either or both of these interpretations appeal to you? In what ways might you feel resistance to them?

2. In his message, Cole said “God is not interested in preserving hope like an artifact in a museum.” He went on to say that Christianity is not that interested in preserving things in the way that they used to be. And that, instead, Christianity‘s radical message is that hope can die - and that a new hope can be resurrected again… And again… And again. 

Spend a few moments, considering these ideas about the nature of God and Christianity. What are your initial responses? What thoughts and feelings are surfacing for you as you consider? Are there things that feel reassuring about these ideas? Are there things that feel frightening?

Consider your responses, and reflect on the origins of your own sense of Christianity’s relationship to hope and/or how it functions. Does considering the places and ways in which you learned to understand these ideas shift anything for you? If so, how so?

3. Ultimately, the message Cole identified in both the passage from Isaiah and the movie, The Children of Men, that he used to explicate these ideas is that, “Like Christ, hope sometimes dies… but it comes back.”

He went on to say that if our [Christian/Biblical] stories are anything, they are a public record for the world that “hope does not stay dead. It doesn’t.”

How do you respond to these statements about the inevitability of resurrected hope? How congruent are they with your sense of what hope is and how it functions? 

Do you have stories in your own past that make it harder or easier to believe in these statements about the inevitability of hope’s resurrection?

Where in your life today is hope dead, dying, or threatening to flicker out? How do you feel about the idea of hope’s resurrection in  the context of those circumstances? How difficult does it seem to believe? Whether you feel doubtful or encouraged or something else entirely, why do you think you might be feeling that way?