What is biblical hope?

When Edward Scissorhands emerges from his dark castle, he is met with the gap between longing and capacity. Where hands should be, there are only scissors. He was created for gentleness, but his form makes tenderness nearly impossible. He cannot hold what he longs to touch. He cannot embrace what he loves.

This is Week 1 of our Advent series, where we explore four themes at the heart of the season: hope, faith, joy, and love. Each week, we’ll use a unique “Christmas” film to help us understand what Scripture teaches about preparing our hearts for Christ’s coming. If you haven’t read the introduction to this series, you can start there to understand how these unexpected stories illuminate biblical truth. This week, Edward Scissorhands teaches us about hope.

This gap, this inability to be what he was meant to be, becomes the image through which we’ll explore our own condition. But to understand biblical hope, we must first name what brokenness really is.

We are broken not because we were poorly designed. We were created in the image of God, deliberately and with goodness (Genesis 1:27, 31). We are broken because we rebelled. We chose our own way over God’s way. We are, in the deepest sense, not incomplete but corrupt—not missing something, but turned against Someone. This is the Fall. This is sin. And this is the reality that hope must address.

When Edward steps into the world with his scissors for hands, he faces a gap he didn’t choose. But you and I face a gap we did choose—a separation from God that we created through willful rebellion. And yet, this is where hope begins: not with the absence of brokenness, but with the choice to trust in a God who comes toward us anyway.

What Is Biblical Hope?

Before we go deeper, let’s be clear about what we’re talking about. Biblical hope is not the same as optimism or wishful thinking. It’s not hoping that things work out the way you want. It’s not positive thinking or denial of your circumstances.

Biblical hope is confidence in God’s faithfulness and His promises, even when your circumstances don’t reflect that promise yet. It’s an anchor—something that holds steady when everything else is unstable. It’s what you hold onto when the visible evidence argues against trusting anyone or anything.

Theologian Charles Spurgeon captured it perfectly: “Where hope is, there is faith; where faith is, there is God.” Biblical hope isn’t about your feelings or your situation. It’s about the character and faithfulness of the God you’re trusting.

This is the hope we’re exploring this week. Not optimism. Not denial. But a deep, theological trust that God is faithful, that He works through brokenness, and that His promises are true even when you can’t see them yet.

How Biblical Hope Grows in Suffering

So what does this kind of hope actually produce in a broken life? The Apostle Paul writes to the church at Rome: “We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5).

Notice the sequence. Suffering comes first. Not joy. Not comfort. Suffering. Yet somehow, through that suffering, perseverance develops. And through perseverance, character. And through character, hope emerges. Hope is not the absence of difficulty. Hope is what you discover on the other side of faithfully walking through difficulty.

Edward’s story shows us this pattern. His brokenness is undeniable. The suffering is real. But through that broken form, something extraordinary emerges.

What Edward’s Brokenness Reveals

When Edward first meets Peg in his dark castle, she sees him as incomplete. But she doesn’t see him as disqualified. She brings him home. The neighborhood discovers that his scissor hands, which should render him useless, instead become the instrument of his greatest gifts. He creates art. He tends yards. He gives generously of himself, asking nothing in return.

His incompleteness doesn’t prevent him from serving. It becomes the means through which he serves.

This is the movement of grace. God doesn’t wait for us to be fixed before he offers us the opportunity to participate in his transformative work. He meets us in our brokenness and says: this is exactly where I work.

Paul understood this intimately. He wrote about his own incompleteness, his own struggle: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me… What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” (Romans 7:15, 21, 24).

And then the answer: “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25).

The deliverance doesn’t come when Paul becomes complete. It comes when Paul fully trusts the One who is complete. It comes when he stops looking at his own hands and looks instead toward Jesus.

This is the movement from despair to hope. And it requires a shift in focus. It requires vision.

The Vision That Sustains Hope

Edward faces a choice at every moment. He can focus on what he cannot do with his scissors hands. He can despair at the gap between who he wants to be and what his form allows. He can fixate on the obstacle.

Instead, he chooses a vision beyond himself. He focuses on the people he wants to serve. He focuses on the beauty he can create. He focuses on the life he wants to participate in. And from that vision, he acts.

This is what hope does. It shifts your perspective from obstacles to God’s promise. Not denial of reality, but confidence in what God has already accomplished and promised to complete. Hope is choosing to focus on God’s faithfulness rather than on the size of your problem.

Paul writes: “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). This is the Christian’s vision: not clarity about how everything will work out, but certainty about who we will finally become when we stand before God. It’s not about seeing the future. It’s about knowing the One who holds the future.

For Edward in the film, that vision is a life of purpose despite his limitations. For us, that vision is something far greater: a promise that we will be made new, that our brokenness will be redeemed, that one day we will stand whole before God, fully known and fully loved.

Recognizing Hope Already at Work in Your Life

Here is something crucial that Edward’s story teaches us: his hope isn’t theoretical. It isn’t waiting. It’s demonstrated through action. He doesn’t wait until his hands become real to begin serving. He doesn’t wait until he’s accepted to begin loving. He acts now, in his incompleteness.

And you are doing this too. Right now. In ways you may not even recognize as hope.

The parent, exhausted and running on fumes, who kneels down to look their toddler in the eye and whispers, “Let’s try that again”—that’s hope. The friend who sits with you in your depression even though they’re drowning in their own—that’s hope. The person at work who keeps showing up with integrity and gentleness in an environment that punishes both—that’s hope. The one who says “I don’t know if what I’m doing matters, but I’m going to do it anyway”—that’s hope.

These are not small things. These are not insignificant. These are the ways hope looks in actual life. Not grand gestures. Not perfect circumstances. Just a broken person, choosing to trust in God’s faithfulness, and acting as if that trust is real. You know this. You’ve lived this. You’ve done this.

Paul describes this in Ephesians: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins… But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions… And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:1, 4-7).

The promise isn’t that you’ll become complete before God loves you. The promise is that you’re loved now, in your incompleteness. And that love transforms you.

Hope When Everything Argues Against It

But Edward’s story also shows us what hope looks like when the world rejects it. When the community he served turns against him. When he’s blamed for something he didn’t do and exiled back to his castle. When everything visible argues that hope was foolish.

Even then, Edward’s faithfulness doesn’t end. Snow falls on the suburb where Kim lives. Ice sculptures drift down as tokens of his continuing care. His love doesn’t diminish because it’s rejected. His commitment doesn’t disappear because the world says he’s wrong.

This too is part of Advent hope. Because the Incarnation itself was resisted. Jesus came to his own, and his own did not receive him. The light came into the darkness, and the darkness fought against it. But that rejection didn’t cancel the promise. That exile didn’t end God’s commitment to redeem his broken creation.

Advent calls us into this kind of hope. Not hope that promises everything will work out the way we want. But hope that trusts in God’s faithfulness regardless of how the world responds. Hope that acts as if the promise is real even when there’s no evidence visible yet.

The Part of You That You’re Most Ashamed Of

Here’s where the real challenge begins. Edward’s scissors are visible to everyone. Your brokenness—your scissors—you’ve likely learned to hide. The part of you that you’re convinced disqualifies you, that you believe makes you unfit for love or purpose, you keep tucked away. Maybe it’s your anger. Maybe it’s your fear. Maybe it’s your inadequacy as a parent, your failure in your career, your inability to be what you promised you’d be. Whatever it is, you know it. And you hide it.

But what if that’s backwards? What if the part of you that you’re most ashamed of—your scissors—is precisely the instrument God wants to use to create beauty? Not despite it. Not in some distant future when you’ve fixed it. But through it, now, as it is.

Edward didn’t become worthy of love by fixing his hands. He became an artist through his hands exactly as they were. His limitation became his gift. This isn’t metaphor. This is what grace does. It doesn’t heal your scissors by making them hands. It says: “I see your scissors. I see how they’ve hurt you and others. I see how they’ve held you back. And I’m going to teach you to use them to serve. Not in spite of what you are, but because of what you are.”

The question isn’t: When will I be fixed enough? The question is: What would it look like to offer my brokenness to God and ask Him to show me how to use it?

Living as Though the Promise Is True

Here is the heart of Advent hope: recognizing that Christ has already come once, is with us now, and promises to come again to make all things new. Because of this, we are free to live differently—not to earn hope, but to express it.

Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). Notice: the invitation isn’t to get yourself together first. It’s to come broken, burdened, and weary—and to find rest not through your effort, but through his.

This week, respond to that grace. Not in theory, but with your actual life.

First, identify your scissors. Write down specifically—not vaguely, but concretely—what part of you do you believe disqualifies you? What brokenness do you hide? What failure do you carry? Write it down. Fold the paper. Tuck it into your Bible at Romans 5:3-5 (where Paul tells us that suffering produces perseverance produces hope). Let that placement be a prayer: “I’m acknowledging this to God. I’m not hiding it anymore.”

Then, look for the evidence of grace already at work. Look at this past week. Where did you show up despite your scissors? Where did you do the hard thing anyway? Where did you serve, love, or persist when you had every reason to stop? Name one specific moment. Write it down. These aren’t evidences that you’re strong or capable. These are footprints of the Holy Spirit, evidence that grace is already at work in you, right now, exactly as you are.

Finally, this week, do one deliberate thing. Identify your scissors. Now find one specific, small way to use that very thing to serve someone. If your scissors are your anger, maybe you use it to fight for someone who can’t fight for themselves. If your scissors are your anxiety, maybe you use it to notice and comfort someone who’s struggling. If your scissors are your failure, maybe you use it to offer grace to someone else who’s failed. Don’t hide your limitation. Don’t wait until you’re fixed. Offer it. Use it. Let your brokenness become the instrument of your service, just like Edward’s did.

This is the beginning of hope. Not because you’ve become whole. But because you’re offering your brokenness to God and asking Him to use it. And you’re watching Him do exactly that.

Because that is what Advent hope is. It’s the God who came in Jesus, who is with you now in your scissors and your shame, and who promises to come again and make you whole. And while you wait for that wholeness, He’s teaching you to create beauty with the very hands you hate.

This Week’s Practice

Identify your scissors: What part of you are you most ashamed of? Write it down. Fold it. Place it in your Bible at Romans 5:3-5 as an act of honesty before God.

Recognize grace at work: Think back to this past week. When did you show up with your scissors anyway? When did you do the hard thing? Write it down. That’s hope.

Use your scissors: Choose one specific way to let your brokenness become the instrument of your service. If your scissors are your anger, use it to fight for someone. If your scissors are your anxiety, use it to notice and comfort. If your scissors are your failure, use it to offer grace.

This is Advent hope. Not waiting to be fixed. But letting God teach you to create beauty with the very hands you hate.

The God who came is with us. And he is coming again.