Why is the Advent season repeated year after year?
One outstanding reason is that Advent gives God the opportunity and the readiness to wipe clean the residue of our journey and begin again fresh and clean. God made a promise to love us even though our loving back falls short.
Despite our lukewarm response, God never stops yearning for his dream’s fulfillment. As we fail, God stays optimistic, believing that this present Advent “we will hear Jesus’ words and keep them.”
Jesus’ compassion recognizes this amazing truth. Why? His father’s love inclines us toward good, but often dark clouds block that goodness, and we stumble. God wants each present Advent season to be the one when his creation realizes this profound truth and changes their life direction.
From Yahweh’s time to Jesus’ birth in a straw filled manger, God’s love has never wavered. Advent makes clear that God would rather love than punish. And living our lives to the fullest means walking simultaneously on the same side of the street as God walks.
In Scripture, we remember how Jesus gazed at the woman caught in adultery and asked, “Does no one condemn you?” She replied “No one Lord.” Jesus replied, “Then neither do I. Go and sin no more” And she went away with only Jesus knowing if she kept her word. He simply trusted that she would sin no more.
This is the same trusting Jesus who offers us Advent 2021 with the stories of God’s dream of loving us, and his hope that his creation chooses to live their lives “sinning no more.” While Jesus already knows our response, he still trusts giving us the space and the time to choose.
Advent provides the occasion to do the ordinariness of our lives the best we can. It is following Jesus not by accumulating goods, mounting titles or degrees which only swells egos, but rather equating Jesus’ love for us with the way we love others.
Advent assures us that as God loves, so should we love. When we work to remove false barriers and odious obstacles that holds us back from loving God and loving our neighbors, it releases contentment, joy, and peace. The foretaste of what is in store for us in heaven.
Isaiah, the formidable Advent prophet, preaches how the coming of Jesus opens heaven’s gates, allowing us to see Yahweh’s power of displaying leopards and lambs living in harmony while calves, lions, wolves, and goats all graze together happily.
Every Advent God does his part pouring grace over creation. This gift washes away weaknesses and replaces them with surprising strength allowing the impossible to become possible and attainable.
That’s God ‘s dream and God’s challenge this Advent and every Advent. Will this be the Advent we accomplish them ? As with the woman caught in adultery - only Jesus knows- but none the less still hopes!
O Come! O Come! Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel!
