A Light is Come into the World

There are certain rhythms in life that one ignores at one's peril. Anyone who has traveled internationally and gone through the rigors of jet lag knows this - their Circadian rhythm has been disturbed. There are deeper rhythms, though, that God has placed in life to keep our lives oriented toward Him and one of these begins on December 2.

Advent is the preparation for God intervening in human history in a way so profound that we measure time as Before Christ and After (His) Death. If we look at the time that He came into the world, not a lot has changed. The Middle East was and is a mess. Man plotted and betrayed man; decadence ruled; nations went to war with each other; famine, disease, and all the sordidness of the human condition existed then just as it does now. God made an emphatic statement, however, in the person of Jesus, that this was not the way things were supposed to be and there was hope that God would do what mankind had been unable to do  for all the thousands of years of human history. For the first time there was really hope.

And there is hope still, which brings us back to Advent. The Hope of the World continues to shine despite all the efforts to erase Him for our collective consciousness. Advent is the annual reaffirmation to ourselves and to others that the Hope is still there and that He will straighten the world out some day in God's good time. Until then, keep the faith and remember the Advent season.