Advent Season part one

Advent Season

Part I: What is the Advent Season?

By Dan McDonald

 

            The twin focal points of Advent season observance is Christ’s coming in the birth and life of Jesus Christ; and in His promised return on the anticipated Great Day.

            The Christian calendar year begins with the Season of Advent. I sort of think of this beginning of a new Christian calendar, as our stepping back into an old year. The Christian perspective of redemption is both personal and community oriented. We are told that in the Great Day we will be saved together with those who have fallen asleep. The living and those asleep will be raised together to meet Christ. We are saved with the entire community of those in Christ.

            During Advent season we begin to learn to appreciate the work Christ is doing in saving us, by stepping back into redemption’s plan as if Christ had not yet been born in Bethlehem. At Advent we look forward to Christ’s arrival in the Incarnation, which we celebrate in Christmas. We look also forward to the Great Day, when we shall be transformed becoming like him as we see Him. We born later than our forefathers and foremothers in the calendar of redemption discover we have things to learn as we look forward to the coming of Christ with those who lived life in the hopes yet unfulfilled of promises and prophecies. We now live with Christ’s birth in Bethlehem as history though we have hardly begun to fathom all the ramifications of his life upon earth. In Advent we remember the communal history of God’s people waiting for his arrival.

            The Scriptures speak to us often regarding Christian history as communal memory. Following Israel’s exodus from Egypt, God commanded the people to remember the Passover. In Judaism, all of Israel including the unborn generations of Jewish men and women were to remember that they were at the Passover. They were delivered even if individually they had no memory, but communally all were there at the Passover. In Advent we remember once more that all of us were lost in our sins, and yet God had addressed mankind regarding the good news that the woman would give birth to the seed, who would overcome the Serpent. As generations passed, more promises were given of the one in whom redemption would be won for God’s people. At last the angel spoke and declared, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.”

            The truth is that we are Advent people. We live in the hope that is based on the certainty of our expectation. He who came into the world, and died for our sins, will come again and deliver us from sin and death. Every tear shall be wiped from our eyes, and the former things will be no more.

            He has come into our world and has begun saving us from our sins. He will come again and complete that work in the twinkling of an eye on behalf of all the generations of God’s people who have hoped in Him who is our Redeemer, Lord, and Savior. In Advent we look at the future from the perspective of those who long ago waited for the Great Day of Redemption, and in the fullness of time they shall rejoice alongside of us when the trumpet is blown and our Redeemer returns to bring to completion the work of salvation.

            We often feel the weight of lament during Advent. We continue to struggle with our remaining sins. We continue to mourn the passing of loved ones. We continue to see a world in turmoil with imperfection of rulers, with greed and arrogance in high places, with failures within us and all around us. The Apostle recognized that if this present life were all we could hope for, we would be men and women most miserable. This is the reality of the Advent season in which we live. But we have a hope that will not perish, cannot be taken by thieves, rust, decay, or death. We are presently able to be described as sheep for the slaughter, but we are also rightly described as more than conquerors. We are in the not yet and the soon to be season of Advent.

            I want to write once more on the Advent Season, because even if we face trials, temptations, and tribulations while in the Advent Season, our indestructible hope is fortified with many encouragements from this day until the Great Day. The struggles that go with Advent living are not denials of how Christ has encouraged us by telling us he would be with us to the end of the age. I hope in a few days to write on how he reveals himself to be with us in these trying days, even to the end of the Age. Until the Great Day let us pray, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And also let us pray, “Come quickly Lord Jesus.”