Advent

Anxiety, stress, anticipation, etc, etc.  The Christmas season is upon us.  As a senior in college I find my mind wandering off constantly and that it is hard to stay focused on the current task at hand.  Less than two weeks until the semester ends however, so now is the time to buckle down.  

The interesting thing is that Advent ought to be a time of pondering and a time of anticipation.  Not so much a time of stress or anxiety, even though that unfortunately comes with the territory.  What shall we be expecting?  What shall be in anticipation of?  The prophet Isaiah lets us know:

For to us a child is born,
   to us a son is given;
 and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
   and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
    there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
   to establish it and to uphold it
 with justice and with righteousness
   from this time forth and forevermore.
 The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

This text from Isaiah 9 shows us the strong prophecy of the One who came and who is to come into the world.  2,000 years ago God came from His throne in heaven to embody lowly humanity.  This is the ultimate act of love.  It is out of this love that the illnesses of the world can and will be eradicated.  Things like poverty, disease, war, famine, hate, abuse, neglect, etc. etc.  They will all be gone in an instant.  Until then we keep fighting for what is right.  And that means that in this Christmas season we bring Christ to the poor and the impoverished.  

If our hope is in the Gospel, why can't we share that same beautiful hope with them?  It's time for the church to reclaim scripture and reclaim the pleas Christ gives us to help the down trodden.  It's time for the church to wake up to the needs around it and to stop hammering home one or two sins which they have made into political agendas.  The time has come for the church to rise up against the evil in the world with one voice as if we all worshiped the same God (what a novel concept!).  The time has come for the church to engage the lion that prowls around roaring and to beat it back with the Gospel of Hope.  That Gospel that says Jesus Christ came into the world to serve and to die.  The kind of Gospel that is utter foolishness to those who don't believe (and even some who do) because it is so radical.  The kind of foolishness that laughs in the face of evil and oppression and lends a hand saying, "There is a better way."  The kind of hope that proclaims boldly that Jesus died for our sins but that the story does not end there.  Jesus lives.  And if the American Church wants to be taken serious its time to rise up against the prosperity gospel which has given us the drunken antics of Wall Street and to take up their cross, cut from the same wood as the manger, and to follow Him.  Jesus is in the poor, Jesus is in the diseased, Jesus is in the depressed, Jesus is eating with the sinners.  Where do we spend our time?  

If the Gospel, the Good News, is our hope, then we should look at this as something we "get to do" and not at all something we "have to do."  At the same time, isn't there a better way?

The Way, the Truth, and the Life.