"See Hope"

So,

Here we are at the second Sunday in Advent and we are waiting.

I am not particularly a patient man. I like things to happen. In fact, I have two sayings displayed prominently in my office. One is “dream big, scale back”!

The other is Nike’s “just do it”! 

That is, don’t wait for your dreams and plans to materialize out of thin air. Make plans, change them as needed and do it, not next year, not next week, now!

But Advent is a season of waiting. Christmas is coming, but not yet. 

One year my sister Sue and I were so impatient Christmas Eve for Christmas morning to arrive, went ran downstairs ready to open our packages at 3:00am, just after Santa’s helpers had just finished putting everything under the tree.

My father wasn’t happy!

So, my favorite part of the Advent and Christmas season is not waiting. What is your favorite? The cookies? The Otisville Brass Quintet concert? Christmas Eve services?

What part are you breathlessly waiting for? Perhaps for the wild reception your spouse will give you when they see that special gift you got them?

Shopping for all those gifts is hard. Trying to get something that will be appreciated but doesn’t break the bank!

I love car commercials this time of year! Yep, that’s what I’m giving Sue. A new car with a big red bow on it! Yeah no! That’s not in the budget, ever! 

But perhaps, the automotive companies point us unintentionally, of course, in the right direction.

What we are waiting for and hoping for this Christmas I hope is far less commercial than a new car or a diamond bracelet or even a new gaming system, or a new car.

What many of us are hoping for is peace, joy, love, comfort, and a sense of hope that whatever we have struggling with this year will be resolved, and we will once again know that God is with us!

We want sure knowledge, not just head knowledge, but heart knowing that God is with us! We need to see God!

Something that would give us the peace and joy we see in little children this time of year. We need to somehow dive into that pool of trust and serenity. They are so excited that the Christmas season is here. And they are sure that they will be blessed!

How about you?

I’ve got to say, I just love when a small child gets a wrapped present that comes in a box and what they fall in love with is the box. 

If only we could embrace that kind of simplicity once again. If only we could see God as clearly as we see that box and that child.

Perhaps we can. But only if we remember what Christmas is really all about. The arrival of the child.

That’s the key!

It’s not about the presents, the trees, the decorations, the parties, not even the eggnog. It’s about the child. The child Isaiah talks about right here in Isaiah 9:6.

Remember that the arrival of Jesus was into a pretty grim world, one for sure full of faith, but a faith that was so heavy and so hard and so much much wanted to see God enter into human experience and change things.

The people in Israel lived in a land that had been under occupation by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Egyptians, Seleucids of Syria, and now the Romans.

The Jewish people knew God had promised to come and save them, set them free, but for centuries they had lived under oppressed and been taken advantage of.

A modern equivalent might be the Ukraine, where neighboring Russia invaded, occupied the country, destroyed its infrastructure, and now entering winter, has destroyed much of its power structure, making sure that Ukrainians will suffer through a miserable, cold, hungry winter.
The Israelites of Jesus’ day would have understood very well the misery. 

And it is into that misery that Isaiah speaks. 

Hope is coming. War will end. Occupation will end. Because of a child.

The child!

Speaking almost 700 years before the nativity, just as the Assyrian Empire began to aggressively expand, he told the of Israel people about hope. 

Not something that would happen in a day or two, but something that would change everything.

Because in this child, God’s people would see the hope God had prepared from before the beginning of the world. 

God would enter history incarnate, living in the person of Jesus.

And in Jesus the world would finally begin to understand God’s plan and purpose for humanity.

And …

We would finally experience in him the peace, joy, love, comfort, and sense of hope that God has always intended for us.

 Because of the child. See him and know!

Amen.