Today is the first day of Advent, the Sunday of week 1, and according to the old church calendar, the beginning of the church calendar year. On this day, a family or church that would celebrate Advent would make or use an Advent wreath. The wreath is a ring or circle of evergreen boughs with four candles fixed on all four sides. It would look like this:
At the beginning of the Advent season, the wreath is dark. There are no candles lit. This is like the season of Winter. The days are short and the nights are long; it is a season of darkness. So why darkness? Let’s talk about the darkness first, because knowing about the darkness makes the promise of God so much more exciting. And Week 1 of Advent is about the promises of God.
Many people believe that humans were initially good, or believe today that we are born in innocence. So what happened? We can look around and see that the world is full of people that are wicked and evil, and that even in our own lives we have experienced the pain of betrayal, hatred, greed, and selfishness. What happened to the goodness in people? Yet somehow, despite not only seeing this today, and seeing this throughout history, we still have a longing that someday, things will be better. We are constantly pursuing that, because it is a longing in our hearts. I would say we were created with that longing in our hearts; we were meant to live in a peaceful, flourishing society.
The Bible has a story that helps us understand this. The first books of the Bible were written over 3500 years ago. In the very first chapters of the Bible, we read the story of Adam and Eve. Adam was a man that was directly created by God. God had just finished creating the entire universe, not just the earth, and to finish off his creation, he made Man in his own image, and called him Adam. What does it mean to be made in God’s image? Well, in contrast to the rest of creation, we have the capacity of creativity, complex communication, a high level of emotion, sacrificial love, destructive hate, and a longing to belong in community. When we read about God in the Bible, we find that God has many of these attributes as well. God, having created us, created a perfect environment for us to thrive in and to live in harmony. But with all the gifts He gave us, he also gave us the capacity to choose. After having been deceived by evil ideas given by Satan (an evil spirit, an angel who rebelled against God) we chose to walk away from God, dishonoring him and his offer of harmony on His terms. We decided that we wanted to trust ourselves and seek a better life on our own terms. And this has resulted in the chaos we see today. This is what the Bible calls Sin.
Yet in the third chapter of the Bible, God promises that he is going to work to restore the relationship between himself and humans. He promises to send a savior, a man who would be able to release us from the curse we brought on ourselves. A man who could destroy the sources of evil, and soften our hearts toward him so that we could know the love that He has for us. A man born of a woman who would be bruised on the heel by Satan, but who would ultimately crush Satan’s head. (Genesis 3:15)
This is the promise of God! We have sinned, we have done things we are not proud of. We seek harmony, peace, and a “good life” but it always seems that we can never fully achieve it. We have a longing to belong, but always feel that we can’t trust people enough to actually allow others to know us that well. We have nowhere we truly belong. God’s promise is that though we are helpless, he is gong to send a man who will restore us, redeem us, save us, give us a place to belong, and give us the future that we long for. God has promised to fix it himself, and that through this man, our relationship with God would be restored.
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will bet n his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” —Isaiah 9:6 ~740 BC
So back to the Advent wreath. Today we light one candle. In the darkness, there is a glimmer of hope. God has promised that he will send his Son to restore our broken relationship, to heal our sickness, to forgive our sins, to erase our shame, to calm our fears. The candle lit is a symbol of our hope being ignited. In the darkness there is a bit of light.
Hallelujah! （哈 利 路 亚） This is a Hebrew word meaning ‘Praise to God!’
How about you? Do you feel the hopelessness around the world today? What if you heard from God and he promised a savior? What if you felt that hope? How would it feel? How would it change you? We all have hopes in something. Our hopes are fragile. Have you ever had a hope that you knew no one could ever take away from you?