Advent is the season leading up to Christmas, when we celebrate the coming of our Lord Jesus. It is a time of waiting - of eager anticipation and patient preparation. This means is it a time of hope.
In our Advent series, 'Peace, Joy & Love', we come this week to the matter of love. As we have heard over the past two weeks, in Christ Jesus, there is a peace which surpasses understanding, and the joy of the Lord that we can have and know now. The same is true for the love of God which has been poured into our hearts through the Spirit. And yet we do not always experience the fullness of these things in our lives. We have times when we experience restlessness more than peace, sorrow more than joy, and enmity and hate more than love. Our hearts long to know true peace, joy, and love in real and tangible ways. Some days we may well feel we have waited long enough.
This yearning is an expression of the hope of glory we have in Christ. The good news of the gospel is that God has heard the cry of our heart. And more than that, he himself longs for us to know and be filled with all the fullness of God. And so, in love, he has sent his Son in whom all his fullness was pleased to dwell. The peace of God, the joy of the Lord, and the very love of God in very real and tangible flesh. By faith, through the Spirit, he abides in us, and we in him. And so, we can know the peace, joy and love of God - in real and tangible ways today. And as we do, we live (and rejoice!) in the hope of the glory of God - waiting patiently for what we cannot yet see, but knowing that we he appears again, we will not be disappointed. |
