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Restore us, Lord, God of Armies; make your face shine on us, so that we may be saved. Psalm 80:19

This is the first Sunday of Advent; a Sunday when we focus on hope. Psalm 80 is a prayer of hope. It is a prayer that anticipates and invites the working of God in the midst of brokenness. But the focus of hope is not in the mere restoration of material wealth or prosperity. The writer's hope is that God's face would shine on them; allowing them to experience salvation from what they were going through in the moment, but also from their own waywardness. There is a hint of turning away and this Psalm helps us to see the ways that Jesus restores hope that had perhaps waned because of difficulty. It is through Jesus that we experience the knowing of God that gives us a forward perspective; something that had been lost because of sin and brokenness.