Christmas is coming! The stores are filled with Christmas displays and the Hallmark channel started showing Christmas movies weeks before Halloween. Black Friday sneak peeks have already started. Predictions for holiday spending are in the billions or trillions, depending on whose report you read. For Christians, our hearts are turned toward exclaiming Jesus Christ is Born! Christmas is a vivid reminder that not only does Christ come as a little child, but Christ comes again to fulfill the promise of God’s realm on this earth. Advent is our season to prepare for the ushering in of a new way and new day. This realm is where war will cease, justice reigns, and all people will walk in God’s ways.
As we prepare, we are called to be ready—to enter God’s house, to worship, to pray, to walk and live in Christ’s light. In doing so we help usher in God’s new world, the realm of hope and promise that Christ offers to this earth and its peoples. To usher means to guide, shepherd, or lead. Christ comes to usher in God’s justice and righteousness and reverse the expected ways of the world. It’s a new day! The weak will be made strong, the eyes of the blind will be opened, no traveler will go astray or be left behind and peace will reign. In light of the current acts of war and the ways of violence in the world, hear the hope for peace in Isaiah 2, 2-5:
“In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
Pray that peace will be ushered in this Christmas.
Blessing of Peace and Hope,
Pastor Lenore