Think about the Garden of Eden. In today’s terms it’s often it’s used as a metaphor for having everything you want and need. And sometimes it’s held up as an ideal to pursue: no hunger, no shame, no clearcut forests, no racial oppression, whatever. And it’s not that those things are bad or wrong.
But is that the main message of the Bible? Is that why Jesus came? Is that why we celebrate Christmas?
The word “advent” simply means “arrival.” Not unsurprisingly, then, the advent season came to be a time of anticipating Christmas – that time when we remember that God sent His son on that rescue mission. Born in a manger. Emmanuel. God with us.
Let me say that last thing again. Emmanuel means “God with us.”
Why is that a big deal?
Because we know what it’s like to be separated.
Which isn’t how the whole thing started. God was with Adam and Eve. It’s the promise of heaven, too. And in between, numerous times in both the Old and New Testaments it’s expressed as, “They will be my people, and I will be their God.” Perfect communion. No more bricks. No sin or pain or junk keeping us from an intimacy beyond imagination.
But that’s not where we’re at now. We’ve got this crazy relationship with God, and not surprisingly, we play it out in relationship with each other, too. We were made with the deepest desire for communion, to know and be known. But that’s also the scariest thing we can imagine. Because inside we’re afraid that if someone really knew us, they wouldn’t like us. Because we know that inside we’re broken.
As we kick off advent season with a special daily series, listen to what John describes in chapter one, verses 14 and 16:
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth…Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness… John 1:14,16, CSB
Jesus, the Logos, the logic, the original Word, the radiance of God’s glory and exact expression of His nature, come in the flesh with us, on a mission to seek and save the broken and hurting and rebellious and lost. Living a sinless life, dying a death that we deserve, rising bodily to new life to conquer that death and separation once and for all.
And if trust Him, we get the Christmas of now and not yet. Eden isn’t restored yet, but the promise for today isn’t political solutions or a world devoid of nincompoops.
It’s grace and truth, the Truth, capital T, that gives us the fullness.
It’s knowing and being known and being loved anyway. Not because we said positive self-affirmations, because we know how well that works. It’s really, really being loved.
And it’s a reminder that there is no grace without truth; and no truth without grace.
And it’s a renewal of the mission God gave to Adam and Eve. To take that grace and truth to the world.
I imagine this advent series to be one of connecting the theme of God with us – what we Celebrate on Christmas – with how we are to connect with Him and others. To be His hands and feet.
I’d love to tell you I have it all figured it out in advance. In reality, it’ll be you and me doing what we always do…sitting at Jesus’ feet, having a conversation, and learning to fall more in love with Him, each other, and the people in His world.
He was born for a mission. We are born again for a mission.
Welcome to Advent. It’s all For the Hope.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in communications, an award-winning author and speaker, and a passionately bad guitarist. ForTheHope equips on-the-go professionals with biblical principles to engage marketplace relationships with competent humility. On Twitter can follow him @RogerCourville and/or his podcast @JoinForTheHope, or get all updates by email subscription at www.forthehope.org.