Praise the Lord
for this festive and celebrative Thanksgiving season. I trust that you
all had a blessed time of feasting, friendship, fellowship, and even
football. Thank you all for your Thanksgiving greetings and
well-wishes. We have been profoundly and abundantly blessed. Alice
made her annual "Black Friday" pilgrimage yesterday. Usually
she goes out with one or two or more of our daughters but this year went out
alone. While she was out she met up with some colleagues and
friends. Today we walked briefly alongside our town park. It has
been a relatively mild day.
Tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent in our Christian
calendar. The Advent season begins four Sundays before Christmas.
Advent promises the sure coming of the Lord. The Lord is coming whether
or not the world is ready. We as Christians have a great expectation of
Christ coming again. Even as a family looks forward to their child's
return from war or as a bride anticipates her wedding day, so Christians look
forward with joy to the coming of Christ. This joy is well expressed in
the Advent hymns: "Joy to the World" and "O Come, O Come,
Emmanuel". Even in the midst of a world gone mad, filled with
wars and rumors of wars, we proclaim of the good news that Jesus is coming as
the Prince of Peace and the Lord of lords.
For centuries the people of Israel awaited the anointed one -
the Messiah - that He would come to release them from the bondage of
displacement and initiate a new beginning. For the Church today, the coming
of Christ means still more. In the coming of Christ as "the Word
made flesh," our hope is not diminished, but intensified. May the
depth of our hope in our Savior and Lord be manifested in our
daily living, with
gratitude, thankfulness, and expectation. In the words of Charles Wesley,
"Come, Thou long-expected Jesus". This sense of
expectation is well-expressed in the following passage from the liturgy of the
Moravian Church:
"Lord, for Thy coming us prepare;
May we, to meet Thee without fear,
At all times ready be:
In faith and love preserve us sound;
O let us day and night be found
Waiting with joy to welcome Thee."
Romans 13:11-14:
"Besides this you
know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For
salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let
us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day,
not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in
quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no
provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires."
May
the Lord bless each of us as we prepare for the Advent season and propel us to
be effective witnesses and servants in His Kingdom.
In Christ,
Brown
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