Emmaus City Church | United with Jesus in what He is doing in, with, and for Worcester, MA: Advent Is Here & Needed

Themes of the Advent Story: Hope, Love, Peace, and Joy

Jesus Christ is not one more lovely story pointing to these underlying realities – Jesus is the underlying reality to which all the stories point. + Timothy Keller, Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ

Hope | In Waiting for the LORD

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope. + Psalm 130:5

Hope | God Invites Us into the Christmas Story

Hope breaks through into our world as God the Father tells the Christmas story to us, God the Son lives the Christmas story for us, and God the Spirit brings the Christmas story to life in us.

+ Sully

Hope | Light in the Darkness

We do the Light a disservice when we underestimate the darkness.

Jesus entered a world plagued not only by the darkness of individual pain and sin, but also by the darkness of systemic oppression. Jesus’ people, the Hebrews, were a subjugated people living as exiles in their own land; among other things, they were silenced, targets of brutality, and exploitatively taxed. They were a people so beaten down by society that only a remnant – most notably Anna and Simeon – continued to believe that the Messianic prophecies would one day come to pass. For many, the darkness of long-standing oppression had extinguished any hope for liberation. It was into this 'worst world' that the Light-in-which-We-See-Light was born, liberating the people from the terror of darkness.

So it is in the midst of our worst world that we, too, can most clearly see the Light, for light shines more brightly against a backdrop of true darkness.

Advent is an invitation to plunge into the deep, dark waters of our worst world, knowing that when we re-surface for air we will encounter the hopeful, hovering Spirit of God. For when we dive into the depths of our worst world, we reach a critical point at which our chocolate and pageants no longer satiate our longing for hope – and we are liberated by this realization.

Indeed, the light of true hope is found in the midst of darkness.

+ Christena Cleveland

Hope | What's Santa Claus' Story Again?

Saint Nicholas was born in the third century in Patara, a village in what is now Turkey. He was born into an affluent family, but his parents died tragically when he was quite young. His parents had raised him to be a devout Christian, which led him to spend his great inheritance on helping the poor, especially children. He was known to frequently give gifts to children, sometimes even hanging socks filled with treats and presents.

Perhaps his most famous act of kindness was helping three sisters. Because their family was too poor to pay for their wedding dowry, three young women were facing a life of prostitution until Nicholas paid their dowry, thereby saving them from a horrible life of sexual slavery.

Nicholas grew to be a well-loved Christian leader and was eventually voted the Bishop of Myra, a port city that the apostle Paul had previously visited (Acts 27:5-6). Nicholas reportedly also traveled to the legendary Council of Nicea, where he helped defend the deity of Jesus Christ in A.D. 325.

+ Sully

Hope | Who Are You Making Room For?

In light of the horrific videos of unjust shootings released in the past few years, I'm combining two of Spurgeon's quotes below to reflect on our desperate need for us to make room in our minds, hearts, and lives for each other, and hope for more active understanding and just practices in the year to come. Why did Jesus declare that He was the only One who could bring reconciliation between God and mankind, as well as human to human? If Jesus did truly break in with His grace through His humility to come down to our broken world two thousand years ago – and He chose to begin His journey as a baby with an impoverished minority couple and ostracized shepherds amongst an Empire that saw them as less than human – who are we making room for to hear and grieve with, as well as strive to hope with, during this season of Advent?

I was once complimented by a person, who told me he believed my preaching would be extremely suitable for blacks – for negroes. ... ('Because there was no place for them in the inn.') ... He did not intend it as a compliment, but I replied, 'Well sir, if it is suitable for blacks I should think it would be very suitable for whites; for there is only a little difference of skin, and I do not preach to people’s skins, but to their hearts.' ... 'But I feel my heart is a place not at all fit for Christ!' Nor was the manger a place fit for Him, and yet there was He laid. Never mind what the past has been; He can forget and forgive. If you have room, He will come.

+ Charles Spurgeon

Hope | For You and Me Despite Our Failings

Christmas means not just hope for the world, despite all its unending problems, but hope for you and me, despite all our unending failings.

+ Timothy Keller

Hope | Out of His Dark We Glow

His searing sharply focused light

Went out for a while

Eclipsed in amniotic gloom:

His cool immensity of splendor

His universal grace

Small-folded in a warm dim

Female space –

The Word stern-sentenced

To be nine months dumb –

Infinity walled in a womb

Until the next enormity –

The Mighty, after submission

To a woman’s pains

Helpless on a barn-bare floor

First-tasting bitter death.

Now I in Him surrender

To the crush and cry of birth.

Because eternity

Was closeted in time

He is my open door

To forever.

From His imprisonment my freedoms grow,

Find wings.

Part of His body, I transcend this flesh.

From His sweet silence my mouth sings.

Out of His dark I glow.

My life, as His,

Slips through death’s mesh,

Time’s bars,

Joins hands with heaven,

Speaks with stars.

+ Luci Shaw

Hope | The Most Wonderful Message the World Has Ever Heard

For the Son of God to empty Himself and become poor meant love to the uttermost for unlovely men, who 'through His poverty might become rich.' This Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity - hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory - because at the Father's will Jesus became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.

+ J.I. Packer

Hope | Nevertheless, There is Light

The Advent message does not agree with the optimistic thinkers who say, "We can fix things if we try hard enough." Nor does it agree with the pessimists who say we can do nothing. The message is, instead, "Things really are this bad, and we can't heal or save ourselves. Things really are this dark – nevertheless, there is light. There is hope."

+ Tim Keller

Hope | Death and Corruption Abolished

The body of the Word, then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal and, like other bodies, liable to death. But the indwelling of the Word loosed it from this natural liability, so that corruption could not touch it. Thus it happened that two opposite marvels took place at once: the death of all was consummated in the Lord's body; yet, because the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished.

+ Saint Athanasius (297 – 373 A.D.)

Hope | Never in the Darkest Place Can It Be Utter Night

The soft light from a stable door

Lies on the midnight lands;

The wise men's star burns evermore,

Over all the desert sands.

Unto all peoples of the earth

A little Child brought light;

And never in the darkest place

Can it be utter night.

No flickering torch, no wavering fire,

But Light – the Life of men;

Whatever clouds may veil the sky,

Never is night again.

+ Lillian Cox

Hope | Looking Back at and Looking to the Advent of Jesus

Jesus, our Immanuel, reveals that God is with us, breaking into our lives and breaking us free from the chains of selfishness, ingratitude, and our strivings to escape our fears and failures. Jesus is our hope, our key to joy and peace, not only during this season of Advent, but every day we live, move, and wonder who we are and why we're here. Why? Because He loves us.

+ Sully

Hope | Open the Curtains, Let Sunshine into the Dark Room

When you open the curtains in the morning, do you have to make the sun shine into your room? No, you open the curtains and the sun shines in. That's what it's like with God's peace and the hope that He brings. It will flow into our hearts, if we let it. Are you worried? Are you anxious? Is anything troubling you today? Don't try to work it out all by yourself. Let God's peace flow in – like sunshine into a dark room.

+ Sally Lloyd-Jones

Hope | Filled with All Joy and Peace

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.