Happy Advent!

Advent has to be the best of the church seasons of the year for me. It's not just the growing excitement about Christmas - Saviour's birth - with all that means for church and family. It's that sense of waiting, anticipation: the best is yet to be! Bishop Tom Wright has written*:

"God has promised to give the entire world...a complete makeover. It will be renewed from top to bottom, so that it will be filled at last with the presence and glory of God 'as the waters cover the sea.'" (Isaiah 11.9).  That's got to be worth waiting for! Meanwhile, as Wright points out often in his writings, the Christian calling is to live now as if that time has already come, so we show the world what it's like to live the life of heaven on earth. That's why the world needs the church, to point the way.

 

Yes I know we don't always make a very good job of it, but that doesn't revoke the calling does it?

 

* 'Virtue Reborn' p.28