By Pastor Bill Flavin | Scripture: Mark 1:1-8; Isaiah 40:1-11
This first week of Advent we wonder together what hope means for us in 2020? And how do we live as a people of Hope in the midst of all that 2020 is sending our way?
This first week of Advent we wonder together what hope means for us in 2020? And how do we live as a people of Hope in the midst of all that 2020 is sending our way?
It is always the darkest just before dawn. The prophet Isaiah wrote to people who felt like the world they had known their whole lives was gone, and that it was gone because God left them. God went quiet, or at best, where was God? Isaiah then speaks of a light that will come and shine into the darkness. Not to remove all of the darkness, but to bring hope, to remind us all that God is still up to something, that God is at work even in the challenges.
The Old Testament names that one day there will be a child born of a virgin, and his name will be Emmanuel, which means God with Us. That’s such a churchy phrase, God is with us. As the prophet Isaiah spoke those words, it was a game changer. God would be involved in our day-to-day life, God would become a human like us in a grand act of love to save humanity from ourselves. God would step into our story in a concrete way, and still walk with us in the highs and lows of everyday life.
16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.