A Twitch Upon the Thread

Hey folks! This Sunday we are beginning the Season of Advent!

I suspect that as we recover from Thanksgiving feasting and the weather turns winter-y, we're all ready to jump into the Christmas season.

But Advent is a season about waiting, which no one wants to do but everyone has to do.

There are a number of ways to conceive of Advent and its relevance to God’s people. This year, we’re going to emphasize four things:

1) The “waiting” character of God’s people

2) The importance of”remembering” how God has, in fact, shown up for his people in history

3) What Jesus promises about his return

4) What he says about how we should be waiting. 

The people of God can be described in a number of different ways, but one of the things that is common to this people at all times is that we are a people who wait:

• Abraham waits for decades to receive his promised child

• Moses and the people wait for 40 years to arrive at the Promised Land (and he never gets in!),

• The exiled tribes wait for return to the Land

• The returned tribes wait for a messiah.

For 400 years before Christ the people of God waited and heard nothing from God. And tragically when he came “his own did not receive him” (John 1:11). 

As we take our place in this lineage, it only makes sense that we take our place as those who also wait. I’ve said often that it’s important to remember that to the Lord a thousand years is like a day—so these last 2000 years are but a weekend for him, and not even a long one.

However to us a thousand years feel very much like a thousand years. And yet our calling as God’s people is to, among other things, be those people who look for his return “more than watchmen for the morning,” knowing full well we may never see it. This is one way to imagine faithfulness. 

Crucially, however, we are not left alone in our waiting, in our wilderness wandering. In Christ and by the Spirit we have God with us always, even to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20). As we wander and wait we have our Divine bread and drink to sustain us for the journey in the Eucharist, and as we share in all of Christ’s life we can look forward with confidence to our own triumph over death in the resurrection of the dead. We look for this, and as we do we become more truly the people of God through the ages. 

We're beginning this week with the waiting story of Zechariah and Elizabeth: how they waited, and what they finally received!

Scripture to consider:

• Luke 1:5-23

• John 1:1-14

• Hebrews 1:1-3

  
  

Questions for your kids

• Why do you think the angel made Zechariah go mute?

• What is the hardest part of waiting for things you want?

• What is the thing you want more than anything in the world?

Peace,

Danny+