Advent Part 1 (Or: Hope Revisited)

Gaude, gaude! Emmanuel
nascetur pro te, Israel.

This post was supposed to be for last Sunday but homework likes to build up until Sunday evenings, this cuts into blogging time. At the time when I'm writing this it is Thursday so we'll see if I actually get it done in one day.

It came to my attention in church on Sunday that the theme of the first advent candle was hope, an area of expertise on my part. (Hardly, more like a lesson I keep learning over and over.)

I don't really have anything enormous to add to what I said last time but I was interested by a new perspective on hope (and when I'm interested in something that means you get to hear about it). The season of Christmas in celebrating the birth of Jesus is preceded by all the years of hope between Eden and Bethlehem. That's a very long time to hope. That might manage to make us feel a little inadequate if not for the fact that the Israelites decided to go astray every other year or something akin to that.

It's still fascinating to think about though, for all those years all they had was God's word that he was sending a savior and the miracles he did for them in the meantime. We, meanwhile, have the testimony of the Bible and all sorts of saints and other Christians since (as well as your own personal experience with God) telling us that God did indeed send a savior and he's now the reason we hope.  It's a reason to continue the Thanksgiving season into the Christmas season, we can be so thankful that we have what prophets searched for and the things into which even angels long to look.

I guess this is my actual serious Thanksgiving blog combined with my first advent blog (and posted just before the second week of advent. I'm very on top of things.)