Garry spoke tonight on the subject of ‘Advent Arrivals’, starting with a game of ‘word association’ to illustrate the point that nowadays when most of us think of ‘Advent’, the next word we think of is ‘calendar’!
For many people, Advent is the ‘countdown’ to Christmas, but just as the marathon runner Recho Kosgei failed to cross the finish line by only 900 yards in the Warsaw Marathon this year, so often we ‘count down’ and never really arrive…
Advent means arrival, and this time of year sees Christians preparing to remember the coming of Christ to earth. Luke 2:22-26 tells the story of Simeon waiting for the arrival of the Messiah and finding this fulfilled as he held the baby Jesus in his arms. Luke 3:15 shows us that people were waiting expectantly for the Messiah, God’s chosen one, to arrive, but people’s perceptions about what the Messiah would look like were vastly different. Some were waiting for peace to come and justice to be done (see Is 2:4); others were waiting for a ruler to rout the Romans. Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem fulfilled the prophecy about this ruler (found in Micah 5:2), but most people could not understand how He could fulfil every prophecy and be a prophet, priest and king. We have the advantage of looking back to Christmas and seeing how His birth demonstrated the fulfilment of prophecy; we also see how His life, death and resurrection all demonstrate His role as Saviour and Messiah.
Jesus spoke, however, about another arrival for which we still wait. (Matt 24:1-3, Mk 13:26) Just as the people did not really know the time of the arrival of the Messiah and were taken by surprise that first Christmas, so we too do not know when Jesus will come again (1 Thess 5:1-6), a fact which causes many to scoff and doubt (see 2 Pet 3:3-9), but which means we need to be alert, sober and self-controlled. The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night; we need to be counting down to this arrival and not just eating chocolates in our Advent calendars!