Its hard to believe that we are in the Christmas season and that 2022 is about to end. For many of us we have desired a slower paced year, to spend on the things that really matter. We may have even made new years resolutions resolving to do so. But it happens every year; what we expected to be a slower summer was crammed full. And before we know it, its Labor Day weekend. Fireworks give way to football, then pumpkins to Pilgrims. Now, its all we can do to finish us our Christmas shopping and get everything in by Christmas. And we wonder where did the time go.
If we are not careful we will miss the season all together. The purpose of these advent devotionals is to help us recenter what this season, and frankly the purpose of life is all about; Jesus! This first week of Advent we focus on Hope. The Hope of a better tomorrow, a hope of something that is promised but not yet fulfilled. Everyone knows that our world is broken and that things are not as they should be. Perhaps your Christmas season is not what you had intended it to be or thought it would be. This is because of the sin we have in this world that leaves our world broken from what God intended our world to be.
At Advent we get for a moment to grasp what God intended for our world by providing his Son Jesus. In Genesis chapter 3 we see that sin enters the world but we also get a glimpse of God's ultimate plan to redeem the world back to himself. Genesis 3:15 (God says) "I will put hostility between you (the serpent) and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head and you will strike his heel." It is in this verse that we see the beginning plan of God sending his son to crush the head of the serpent and rid us from the hostility of sin.
Now the effects of sin aren't just big global things they are personal things too. With the arrival of sin came sickness, death, sadness, fear, - all of the things most of us wish we could avoid in life. But the season of Advent breaks into our broken world and turns our hearts toward a better reality. That the present darkness that we are facing has been defeated in Jesus. Advent turns the body of Christ away from despair and turns us to the Hope. Even when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, He made a promise that a Savior was coming. God allowed sin to enter the world, but he always had a plan to rescue His Children.
When the weight of sin in our world feels overwhelming, and the disappointments of life cause you grief. Let us be reminded that we are a people whose hearts have been broken by darkness and brokenness, but we are not without hope.
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