Articles
Advent Week Four: Love
All of us long for love — to experience relationships in which another person desires and knows us intimately and pursues our good even so. But this is not just a longing; it’s a need. It’s embedded in who we are. We are made in the image of God, a God who exists in a fellowship of love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Without love, from God and each other, we are not whole, flourishing image bearers.
Advent Week Three: Joy
What gives you joy? Many encourage us to ask this question and pursue only those things which cause us to feel delight. Everything else is simply clutter, if not something more detrimental to our well-being. Whatever doesn’t “spark joy,” as the organizationalist Marie Kondo suggests, ought to be discarded. While this advice seems wise, it will fail us.
Advent Week Two: Peace
Chances are, within the last nine months, you have said, or you know somebody who has said, something to the effect of “Well, that’s 2020 for you.” Every one of us can immediately interpret that sentiment. With a sigh, that simple sentence acknowledges the absurd, chaotic mess that has flooded over this year, seeping into every area of life. We express that phrase in an attempt to keep ourselves afloat in all the craziness, like laughing to stop yourself from crying, but we still feel like Murphy’s Law (“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”) has become the rule of life.
Advent Week One: Hope
Standing in pitch-black darkness can be both suffocating and crushing. Life and breath seem to vanish, for what could exist in that empty blankness? And yet, the darkness itself has substance and almost tangibly weighs on us, wrapping us in fear and doubt as our eyes are robbed of their ability to verify our surroundings. If this is true of physical darkness, how much more true is this of emotional and spiritual darkness?
Preparing for Sunday Worship
Since Jesus Christ miraculously and victoriously rose from the dead on the first day of the week, his faithful followers have gathered together on the same day to glorify God and encourage one another through preaching the Word of God, receiving the sacraments, praying together, singing songs of praise, and sharing testimonies of God’s goodness (Acts 2:42; 1 Cor 14:26; Col 3:16; Eph 5:19). In corporate worship, the Holy Spirit reminds our hearts and minds of his incredible grace and our new life in the Kingdom of God, and we get to respond in gratitude as we recenter our lives on Jesus for the coming week. This time is so crucial to the life of Christians that Scriptures implores us not to neglect the gathering of the saints and to actively stir up one another to love and good works (Heb 10:24-25).