So, I guess the order of the weeks is supposed to be Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace. I labeled my posts for the first week JOY, so I'm going to do HOPE this week.
HOPE!
Hope. It is a word that describes the Christian experience. We can give love, because we have hope. We can have joy because we have hope. We can make peace because we have hope. We have hope because we have been given grace graciously.
We do not hope that the story will have a happy ending. We have hope that the story has a happy ending, based on the promises of the one strong enough to keep his promises. Even when we are undone and fainting, we have hope. Even when we are losing what earthly possessions we most hold dear, we have hope.
Jesus' birth was the first glimmer of that hope, shining forward and backward through time, which would become the roaring brightness of day on the morning of his resurrection.
Hope.
Reading:
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Matthew 11:2-10
I'm getting these readings from "The Festival of Christmas" by Mary Hinderlie and Edna Hong. I like Christmas readings that are "old standards" and that fit in nicely with my image of the manger scene. These take a little bit more thinking to tie them in to Christmas.
I kept my kindergartner home sick from church today. Together we looked at the Corinthians passage and talked about how we have been promised that Jesus will come again. In Advent, we remember his first coming and wait for his second coming. My girl then suggested we read the last chapter in her "Jesus Storybook Bible." It is a paraphrase of the Revelation and talks about Jesus coming again and God wiping the tears from every eye.
With the verses from Matthew I said that Jesus was pointing out how he fulfilled the prophecies made about him.
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