Our Life Together

First Sunday of Advent.

We had to ready our advent wreath now that the first Sunday of Advent is here. The craft store was out of red and purple candles, but luckily we found some at the neighborhood super store. We finally got some candlestick holders as well, and pulled the artificial wreath out of the closet. It now sits and shines on our coffee table. (Using up the candles from last year first… the non-dripless candles look awesome.)

I love the season of Christmas, but incorporating Advent makes it all the more lovely. Not 1 day but 4 weeks of anticipation, celebration, and great joy. Of course, the joy is subdued when there is waiting. The joy in waiting, it seems, is fueled by hope. Without the hope of a Savior, there could be no joy in that Savior’s coming or the promise of the coming. The hope of Israelites centuries ago is similar to the hope of Christians today – the former hoping in the Messiah’s first coming, the latter in His second.

We’ll leave you with some hopeful passages from Isaiah that we’ll be meditating on this week:

“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”

This is what the LORD says:
“In the time of my favor I will answer you,
and in the day of salvation I will help you;
I will keep you and will make you
to be a covenant for the people,
to restore the land
and to reassign its desolate inheritances,

to say to the captives, ‘Come out,’
and to those in darkness, ‘Be free!’
“They will feed beside the roads
and find pasture on every barren hill.

They will neither hunger nor thirst,
nor will the desert heat or the sun beat upon them.
He who has compassion on them will guide them
and lead them beside springs of water.
-Isaiah 49:6, 8-10