Pastor’s Corner – December 2019

If you are comfortable in this world, then I encourage you to ignore Advent. Christmas is the holiday for you. For you waiting and hoping are not really all that worthwhile at best, and a total waste of time, at worst. So instead, why don’t we all just jump to the fun stuff?

Advent only makes sense if you want (or need) something else, something bigger than yourself to hold onto. If you need to believe that as wonderful as the sun, the moon, and the stars may be, when they fall away it will be because a new, brighter, more perfect light has come and we no longer need these things, then Advent is time well spent.

Advent is a special time when we anticipate our favorite stories about Jesus’ birth, but if we do it right, it’s also a time when we look at ourselves and our world and decide we shouldn’t be comfortable. We shouldn’t be comfortable that people are starving a stone’s throw away and that their starvation will last
long past the holiday season when people are feeling generous with canned goods. We shouldn’t be comfortable that we stand as a divided country, politically, economically, racially, and that those on both sides of the political aisle are responsible. We shouldn’t be comfortable that violence seems to be increasing at an alarming rate, and all those on either side of the debate wants to do is accuse the other of not caring.

For us Christians, the alternative is to trust in the kind of king, who gets born in a stable, and laid in a feeding trough, who teaches that people who trust in God should not be concerned about their status or well-being in this world, and who gets strung up on a cross for telling the truth to people who were
completely comfortable with the world as they knew it.

This advent, join me as we journey toward Bethlehem, and ultimately toward Jerusalem, and honor the one who graciously makes us uncomfortable and leads us to joy!

Blessings on your Advent journey.
Cory