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“Help is on the way,” Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill yelled to the small number of Tampa Bay fans gathered behind the Chiefs’ bench Sunday, Nov. 29, as he piled up 269 yards and scored three touchdowns against the hapless Buccaneer pass defense.

Hill was reprising one of the most famous trash-talking fan trolls of all time when Shannon Sharpe of the Broncos picked up a sideline phone in Foxboro, Massachusetts, in 1996. Denver was embarrassing New England, and Sharpe pretended to call the president asking him to send the National Guard to help the Patriots’ defense. He then yelled to the fans, “They’re coming. Help is on the way. Help is on the way, I promise you.”

Although he was playing around with some fans while shredding the Buccaneer defense, Hill’s words of “Help is on the way” to the television cameras on the first Sunday of Advent — the Sunday of hope – could have well been an address to a weary nation.

In this season of Advent, help is on the way.

It’s a message that has been sent for ages by prophets, like Isaiah, who delivered messages of hope about the coming Messiah to help weary Israelites hundreds of years before the heavenly host appeared to shepherds in the night sky of Bethlehem, announcing that the help they had been promised had finally come.

Now, we see help on the horizon in our fight against the coronavirus and in our struggle to be a better people.

Two vaccines have now been approved and finally give frontline doctors and nurses hope that the days watching people die alone from coronavirus will soon pass.

Help is coming in the form of a new presidential administration that will soon take office, giving us hope that we will have a leader in the White House with an understanding of who we are as a nation and what we aspire to be as the leader of the free world. A throwback to when the West Wing was not the set of a reality show that could be thrown into a panic at any moment by an ill-timed tweet.

We will gain a person of empathy who understands the sadness of families missing someone at the table this holiday season and will take as much responsibility for our failures as a nation as our achievements.

Yes, Tyreek Hill, help is on the way in this season of Advent. But it does not include better pass defense for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The help includes a vaccine to heal our nation’s people, and a new leader to heal the nation’s soul.

ROGER WATSON is editor of The Farmville Herald and Farmville Newsmedia LLC. His email address is Roger.Watson@FarmvilleHerald.com.