Skip to main content

Advent - a time of New Beginnings

It's the First Sunday in Advent and I want to invite you to sojourn with me through this season of celebration that leads us to Christmas Day. Advent is a season and not just a day. It begins four Sundays before Christmas...in fact, this year it's the earliest it can begin.
Advent means "arrival, coming"...and it reminds us that Jesus Christ came to us to be Immanuel - God with us. Today I ask you to consider with me - God Promised the Messiah - His Son - and he kept that promise in a rather remarkable way. His Son didn't come bursting through the clouds with 10's of thousands of Angels, but rather came through birth.
700 years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah looked upon the landscape of His nation - Israel, and he saw a discouraged and fearful people.  To the North came a threatening nation that was preparing to attack.  Within his own nation he saw an unfaithful people when it came to God, and he knew the inevitable - God would allow the Assyrians to attack and win.  The nation was about to be destroyed.
Yet in this destruction, God made a promise.  It was in a simple picture:
Isaiah 11:1-4
1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him-- the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD--
3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears;
4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth...
A Shoot - a small stem from the stump...new growth would occur...a new person would come and it would all be changed in time.
We are distracted by world events.  A new election, a chaotic Middle East, a concerned and struggling Europe.  North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria...daily headlines and daily concerns.  We are so easily distracted by the noises that are the loudest around us that we might even miss the shoot coming from the stump.
Yet it is God's promises that will always outlast worldly concerns and events.

If you would like to come with me on this Advent sojourn, I'd like to recommend you pick up a book I wrote three years ago. It's available through Amazon as an e-book.
I love this season and hope you can grow to love it too.
https://www.amazon.com/Advent-Sojourn-Elliott-Pollasch-ebook/dp/B00FN1130C/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wednesday, Day 25: Christmas Eve - God Loves Us (So We Can Relax)

For Kids: There’s a lot of things we have to do each day. Get up from our sleep, Get dressed, Eat Breakfast, Get ready for School, Listen to the teacher, play with friends, eat our lunch, and after it’s all done, go back home. There’s time to play, Then we eat our supper… And eventually we have to get ready for bed and go to sleep! And then we do it all over again the next day. Sometimes there’s a vacation - like right now - and we get more time to play, to have fun and not have to do work at school. Our parents are good at helping us know what time it is and what we need to do next – even when we don’t want to move on to the next thing.  God is also good at helping us know what time it is, and what is next.  He doesn’t shout at us, or yell, or even scream…he does it peacefully, quietly.  He wants us to understand that he does it, most of all, for us. Christmas can be quite busy and there’s lots of things going on at once…but l...
Post a Comment
Read more

Joy to the World - Help is On the Way

It’s the first day of Advent– while you prepare for Worship this morning at church take a minute to ask God to direct you through this season that you might be prepared to “receive your King”. In the first week of Advent we celebrate the PROMISE of His Coming. His promise is based on our need. We were made in his image, but there is emptiness in our soul that is the result of the Fallen nature of sin. But why did Jesus come? What in his coming announces God's heart? His desire for us to know and experience? 10 BUT THE ANGEL SAID TO THEM, "DO NOT BE AFRAID; FOR BEHOLD, I BRING YOU GOOD NEWS OF GREAT JOY WHICH WILL BE FOR ALL THE PEOPLE; 11 FOR TODAY IN THE CITY OF DAVID THERE HAS BEEN BORN FOR YOU A SAVIOR, WHO IS CHRIST THE LORD. GREAT JOY! Did you know that God is Joyful? 1 CHRONICLES 16:23-27 (NASB) 23 SING TO THE LORD, ALL THE EARTH; PROCLAIM GOOD TIDINGS OF HIS SALVATION FROM DAY TO DAY. 24 TELL OF HIS GLORY AMONG THE NATIONS, HIS WONDERFUL DEEDS AMONG ALL THE PEOPLES....
46 comments
Read more

Wondering Out Under the Stars

A Reading: Colossians 1:9-20 (NIV) 9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether th...
28 comments
Read more