We are a people who, more than usual this year, realize that we are living in darkness.

We are longing for a glimmer of light.

We are waiting, holding our breath, for the promised light to appear.

This is Advent.

A longing for God to come.

A waiting for God to fulfill his promises as creator God and covenant God.

What has God promised?

He has promised to come to us, to rescue us from sin and death, to make us his perfect and holy people.

In a way, we have been in Advent for months.

We have been waiting and longing for God to come down and fix this, fix us, clean up this mess we’ve made.

In a way, we have been living in Advent our whole lives.

In this season of Advent, we wait for Christmas. We practice and imagine waiting as Israel waited for hundreds of years for Messiah. Savior.

How do we know that God will keep his promise? We have waited so long.

We know that God will keep his promise because he kept it once before.

Messiah came. He came and he defeated sin and death and now we can know that God keeps his promises.

And so we keep Advent this year, especially this year, to remind ourselves that God keeps his promises.

One day he will come again and rescue us and set things right for all time. He will come and we will be his people and he will be our God.

He will come and give us the best gift of all.

Emmanuel.

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all photographs are copyright Made Sacred 2020