“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in a pitch-dark land, light has dawned.”(Isaiah 9:2, CEB)
Today marks the first Sunday of Advent, the season which calls upon Christians to expectantly wait for the coming of Christ.
Waiting.
If you’re like me, you might find waiting to be difficult. When I was a kid, I could hardly wait for Christmas morning. I would spend hours picking up my presents from under the tree, shaking them and feeling them through the gift wrap to try and guess what they were. The older (and bolder) I got, I would even hunt for them in all of my Mom’s hiding places to check them out before they were wrapped and placed under the tree. Thankfully, my Mom was one of the most forgiving people I’ve known in all my life.
All this is nowhere near a worthy comparison to the waiting that the people of Israel once had to do. For generations they had heard from prophet after prophet about the coming of the Lord, their Messiah. Then, inexplicably, they heard nothing but silence. Over 400 years of silence, in fact (the amount of time that "splits the history" between the Old Testament and the New Testament).
In spite of Israel's "expectant waiting," it happened quite unexpectedly on one amazing night in the city of Bethlehem when that silence was broken by the cry of a newborn baby. God didn't just send another prophet, he put on flesh and moved his bright, divine self into our dark, human world.
I love how Charlie Hall captures the spirit of all this in his Advent song, Light Has Come:
Good tidings to the world around
To the weak and the broken down
In a small, poor and dirty town
Light has come
A baby splits history
Light has come
A baby splits history
Emmanuel, Savior, King
Come sinner let your eyes see
Light has come
Light has come
May the grace and peace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, be with us all this holiday season as we again practice the discipline of waiting with joyful expectation for the coming of the greatest light that the darkness around us has ever seen. Amen.
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Dan Johnson. 352-317-4409
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