Welcome to the most dangerous season of the year.
The most dangerous season? Why?
Not because of marauding bands of “Black Friday” shoppers oblivious to the dangers of consumerism or the crush of crowds. Not because of the risk to your credit rating should you charge your future away to purchase gifts to be played with for a short while yet paid for over months or years. Not because of the possibility of the expansion of your “bottom line” through overindulgence in the gastronomical delights of the season.
No, this is the dangerous season the church of the Lord Jesus Christ calls Advent. It is the season when the world will do all it can to plug your ears to its message. It is the dangerous season for, should we hear the call of God in this time, we will awaken to our true identities as children of God. We do not belong to the financial adventurers on Wall Street. We do not belong to the retailers on Main Street. We do not belong to the politics of the moment and those who push them. We do not belong to any other competing loyalty, even nation or family. We belong first to God. We are God’s children and it is time to prepare to welcome anew our Brother Jesus into the world.
Advent is the dangerous season for we are desperate to discover lives worth living and deaths worth dying. We are desperate and we need our Brother Jesus to come to our aid.
Advent is the dangerous season for our Brother Jesus, who is Lord and King, too, is coming, whether we are awake to his coming or not.
Advent is the dangerous season for the coming of our Brother-Lord-King will awaken many of us which, in itself, may provoke crises within us we had not anticipated.
Advent is the dangerous season for He is coming and we whose hearts, minds and souls stir know who we have been and who we are supposed to be.
We are those who have received the gifts of grace, forgiveness, reconciliation and redemption in the Name of our Brother-Lord-King Jesus. We are now those who have been called to live the reality of His kingdom, His household, His family in the midst of this world’s competing realities which burden us so. We have been inscribed with his Name, which reveals his character and this we bear in witness to the world and its false proclamations.
When the world says hate, we who bear the Name say love.
When the world says revenge, we who bear the Name say forgive.
When the world says anger, we who bear the Name say mercy.
When the world says war, we who bear the Name say peace.
When the world says get all you can, we who bear the Name say give with a generous heart.
When the world says divide and conquer, we who bear the Name say be reconciled.
When the world says be bitter, we who bear the Name say be gentle.
When the world says anxiety, we who bear the Name say patience.
When the world says fear, we who bear the Name say faith.
When the world says power, we who bear the Name say the cross.
Welcome to the dangerous season, my friends, for it is the season of our conversion that empowers us to live up to the Name that is now our name, too.
AMEN.
-Bob Guffey
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