Love is both a command and an eschatological promise. The promise undergirds our striving to obey the command.
Love is both a command and an eschatological promise. The promise undergirds our striving to obey the command.
Jesus calls us to do the hard work to prepare the soil of our hearts an minds, ready to grow the fruits of faith, hope and love.
The coming Christ will accomplish his purposes, which will be the best for us but may conflict with what we want from him.
God’s merciful and all-inclusive love is steadfast, not arbitrary, and so fills us with hope in the coming Christ.
Amidst the variety of opinions about the Coming Christ, there is a real message of hope that reshapes our lives.
In his suffering death, Jesus calls us to solidarity with all who suffer, and in his complete lack of vengefulness, the risen Christ offers the hope of healing from our violence.
The Christian life is often lived against overwhelming odds, but the presence of Christ and some basic godly resources make it a good bet.
To those for whom the griefs of yesterday or the fear of tomorrow is just too much, come Lord Jesus.
In Advent, we wait to discern more carefully the One for whom we wait, and the One who waits for us.
We are given gifts from God – faith, love and hope – to help us cope with all that is less than God – especially when ‘principalities and powers’ overwhelm us.
When hopes have been extinguished and all is despair, God comes back.
The coming Christ will continually confound our expectations, no matter how well informed or righteous they may be.
Advent faith believes in the possibility of surprise, and that our tragic and repetitive history has a punch-line which will overturn everything that we have been taught to expect.
In baptism, we have passed from the preoccupations of the present to the a life shaped by God’s future, and though the completion of that transformation may be painful, it is nevertheless the fulfilling of our deepest longings.
Advent is a time of deep paradox, a season that speaks to the reality of our world and calls us to be awake.
The answers to the questions about our future directions are not easy, but we can trust the God who holds our future in his hands.
God invites us to be immersed in another possible reality, to look at the world with the dark and contrary light that comes from the cross of Jesus.
God is always acting, but often in surprising and paradoxical ways. The ways of God often reverse human expectations.
In the midst of horror and despair, Christ arrives with love enough, with peace enough, with hope enough to make things very, very, very different.
The Advent season is a gift that illumines our present with light from our promised goal, to shape us as a people of patient and vigilant faithfulness.