December 2021 Newsletter
Happy New Year!
These words may seem premature. We are in the beginning of December. Thanksgiving is a recent memory and Christmas is weeks away. The Christian year begins on the First Sunday of Advent. In our reflection on Advent, I call your attention to the words of Mark’s Gospel: “Take heed, watch; for your do not know when the time will come.” – Mark 13:33
For most of the world this is a time of counting the shopping days before Christmas. In the first century, however, a young Christian Church hears mocking voices saying “Where is your King? You thought he was coming back, but he has not returned. Surely he has abandoned you.” People of faith have always known dark days when the world mocks us. Those anxiously waiting for the coming of the Messiah in the first Advent endured hundreds of years filled with ridicule as they were conquered repeatedly and the Temple desecrated.
Waiting is both dark with despair and light-filled with hope. Advent is about waiting – that which has already been fulfilled in the birth of Jesus and the second advent of his return.
Fleming Rutledge, is quoted in Good News Magazine: “The church lives in Advent. That is to say, the church lives between two advents. Jesus Christ has come; Jesus Christ will come. We do not know the day or the hour. If you find this tension almost unbearable at times, then you understand the Christian life. We live at what the New Testament depicts as the turn of the ages. In Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God is in head-on collision with the powers of darkness. The point of impact is the place where Christians take their stand.”
In the meantime, the dash between the dates of His birth and return, we prepare. “Behold, the Judge is standing at the doors” (James 5:8-9). Keep awake, then…if He comes suddenly, He must not find you asleep.
Yours in Christ,
Brother David