Happy New Year

Happy New Year! Tomorrow is the beginning of Advent when we enter a new church year.

Advent is the season when we get ready to celebrate Emmanuel, God-with-us, in the person of Jesus. We prepare our hearts to receive the message of peace and good will with great joy.

So, why do we read from the portion of the gospel of Luke quoted above that anticipates the end times, a time of distress? Jesus upset the powers of the world. Turned it upside down. Any such re-ordering of values and structures is bound to cause distress. Yet, this re-alignment of earth toward heaven is also a cause for great hope. Reading further in Luke 21, we learn that amid the cataclysmic end times is the hope of a new heaven and a new earth. The kingdom of God is near. Jesus shares this hope by telling the parable of the fig tree that puts forth its leaves, heralding summer, a time of bounty.

For this Jesus was born—to usher in the kingdom of God, a time marked by peace, provision, joy, and the thriving of all people and creation. Jesus is the savior of the world.

Just as we get ready for Jesus’ First Coming, Advent is also a time when we actively wait for and anticipate Jesus’ return, the Final Coming. During Advent let us wonder, “how can we live with the certain knowledge of the full arrival of the kingdom of God as it rushes toward us?”  What would such a life look like? How might you live differently today if you knew that the kingdom of God was just around the corner?