Date: November 27, 2022

Bible Text: Isaiah 2:1-5, Matthew 24:36-44 |

Today is the first Sunday in Advent, and Advent is the season of preparation for Christ's coming into the world - in history as a child, in our daily lives as Savior, and in the future as Ruler and Judge of all creation. So it isn't just waiting for the baby Jesus. But it is about waiting. And if we wait patiently and intentionally, we wait with hope.

Hope is our theme for Advent this year. We will spend the four Sundays and the four Wednesday Advent study sessions considering hope as a biblical practice for following Jesus Christ. We begin with "Hearing Hope" - that is, you need to hear about something that is coming before you can have hope about it. So we will try to figure out who to listen to and what to listen for that might let God's promises lead us to a biblical hope.

We will continue building the practice of Hope in our worship services through Advent and also in our Advent Study on Wednesday nights at 6:45 pm (ET), which will be in person and on Zoom.

 

Notes from the Preacher

So in our practice of hearing hope, it might be helpful to take stock of all the things that we are hearing with it, around it, and against it. What messages do you hear most often? What messages do you pay attention to most often? Are they messages of gloom and doom? of secular hope? or of sacred hope from God? What would it take for you to hear more of what God is saying and has promised?

You might be interested in this Advent devotional book from Fr. Richard Rohr (my current favorite theologian): Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent.

(Shameless ask: If you buy it at smile.amazon.com you can choose Catoctin Presbyterian Church as the recipient of a portion of the proceeds. That goes for anything you buy at amazon!)

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