Advent is Here!

This Sunday, we begin the season of Advent, a season of wonder, hope, and expectation. While Easter and Pentecost often steal the spotlight in the Christian year, I hold a deep affection for Advent because it places us face-to-face with the astonishing truth of God’s love for us and for God’s very good creation.

Advent is not merely a countdown to Christmas. It is the Church’s bold proclamation that God is the One who acts. In a world that teaches us to depend on our own strength, strategies, and successes, Advent interrupts us with a deeper reality: the Creator of heaven and earth is moving toward us. God is not passive or distant, nor waiting for us to close the gap. Advent declares that God is the first mover, coming into the world through a vulnerable child to reclaim creation from everything that distorts, destroys, and dehumanizes.

As the first season of the Christian year, Advent sets all things into perspective. It reminds us that the world will not simply get better if we just try harder. Instead, it proclaims the biblical truth that we live between two ages: the present age and the time yet to come. And here, in this contested space, God has launched a full-scale invasion of grace. In the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the new world breaks into the old, and we begin to see glimpses of the coming reign of God.

This is why biblical images of Advent are so fierce: axes at the root of trees, wilderness prophets, cosmic signs. These are not meant to frighten us but to tell the truth: God’s reign is arriving, and the powers of Sin and Death will not yield without resistance. The Church stands in this tension like a people living between D-Day and V-Day, knowing Christ’s victory is already secured even as the battle continues.

And yet, Advent does not call us to fear. It calls us to faithful resistance.

We are not spectators. We are God’s beloved people deployed behind enemy lines—bearers of light, makers of peace, signs of a new kingdom.

Amid all the challenges life brings, Advent teaches us to watch, not passively but attentively, for signs of God’s future breaking into the present. It reminds us that suffering does not negate God’s nearness; often it is the very sign that God is at work. In the darkest moments, Advent whispers: Lift your eyes. Something holy is unfolding. The Light is coming.

To embrace Advent is to stand in the tension between the world as it is and the world as God promises it will be. It is to trust, with Abraham, in “the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that don’t exist into existence” (Romans 4:17). It is to hold fast to the promise that Christ is coming to make all things new.

So as we begin this season, may our hearts be open to the God who moves toward us. May our eyes be sharpened to see God’s quiet invasion of grace in unexpected places. And may our lives become small signs of the new world Christ is bringing.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Come and make all things new.

Pastor Jeff