DON’T OVERLOOK ADVENT

While we are looking forward to celebrating Christmas this year as perhaps we have never done so before, we must not overlook the next four weeks when we celebrate the season of Advent. We need to observe it as a time of watching and waiting for the coming of Jesus in his kingdom now. We long for the coming of Christ’s kingdom in power to overcome the troubles of this age in which we live.

God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of light. We receive in our hearts the good news of the coming of God’s Kingdom and prepare ourselves to celebrate with confidence and joy the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We pray to respond in penitence and faith to the glory of his Kingdom, its works of justice and its promise of peace, its blessing and its hope.

As we renew our allegiance to God’s loving purpose, we pray for all who at this time especially need his pity and protection: the sick in body, mind and spirit; those who suffer from loss of dignity or loss of hope; those who face the future with fear, or walk in the shadow of death.

We pray that we may bear true witness to this hope in a divided world, that the whole earth may live to praise his name.

As we rejoice with the saints in heaven and on earth, we remember all those who have gone before us with the sign of faith, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we offer up our prayers for the coming of his Kingdom.

May God, of his grace and mercy, grant to us all a new trust in his good providence and a new obedience to his sovereign word, for to him is most justly due all glory, honor, worship and praise, world without end.

(Excerpted from THE PROMISE OF HIS GLORY)