Sunday, the first week of Advent, 2009

Today's readings:
AM Psalm 146, 147; PM Psalm 111, 112, 113
Amos 1:1-5,13-2:8; 1 Thess. 5:1-11; Luke 21:5-19

By your endurance you will gain your souls. Luke 21:19

As we enter into Advent, we enter a new beginning where we are to listen to our God as we wait with anticipation the coming of our Lord, our Messiah, Jesus the Christ. Fortunately for us, we get this new beginning to try these things again, because heaven knows we have failed miserably at listening to our Lord. In the world in which we live, we have become so wrapped up in the hustle and bustle that we have lost sight of what the word “wait” means. And“coming of our Lord”? We know exactly what He will look like and how He will act and who He will accept! In the world in which we live, in the culture in which we as citizens of the United States of America live, move and have our being, in the consumerism of the secular Christmas season, we do much to create and facilitate the coming of the Lord in our image. We forget that we were created to live, move, have our being and love in God’s image.

Thank God, that Advent brings to us a new beginning so that we can try once again to live into the reality that we are here to serve God, instead of being served by God. Thank God, that Advent brings us a new beginning to try once again to live into the reality that we are here to anticipate the Nativity of our Lord and Savior into our lives and into the world in which we live. Thank God, that Advent brings us an new beginning to try once again to live into the reality that we as Christians have a hope-filled future if we live into the hope that “when we see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory, we can stand up and raise our heads because our redemption, our salvation, is drawing near.”

We need a new beginning because in the end, we can't do it. God, through his love and mercy offers to us a new beginning, another chance, or shall I say, forgiveness for where we have fallen short. It is in the hope of a new begining and the joy of Advent that we can find the endurance of our faith, through ups and downs, through trials and triumphs, so that we will gain, or at least rediscover, our souls.