Waiting...

Every year the church community celebrates Advent. It's a time when Christians pause from the hectic, hustle and bustle of life, and intentionally wait. "Why, would we wait? I mean intentionally wait?" you ask.

Certainly there will be plenty of unintentional waiting. Waiting for turkeys to get done, shopping lines to get through, and traffic to get around, but that's not the kind of waiting Advent is really about. We wait because as Christians we believe that the things that are wrong with our world will one day be made right. One day, Christ will return to redeem and restore his world. Until then, we wait and long for his return.

During most of our lives, we give up on waiting -- we try and get around it or get it over as fast as possible. During Advent, we embrace the waiting. Instead of coping, denying, or just ignoring the problems and pains of the life, we reflect on them. We fast. We contemplate what's wrong with society. We consider what a world redeemed and healed would look like. In everything we remember the hurt so that we might increase our longing for God's redemption. We consider our broken world, and our Savior who entered it, so that we might eagerly await his return.

This Sunday marks the beginning of Advent, and we are starting a 4-part Advent series called, "Waiting." Each week we will consider different ways we can wait and long for the return of Christ and the redemption of God's broken world. Here are the topics by week.

Waiting...
For a Better World (11/28)
For Change (12/5)
For Suffering to End (12/12)
For God (12/19)

I hope you'll join us.