An Eternal Covenant
As much joy and beauty and wonder that this season can bring, an equal amount of loneliness, stress and anxiousness seem to loom towards this side of the calendar year.
On Sunday we heard how the “Dangers of Advent,” are the result of the worldly expectations that flood the Christmas season. The temptation of greed, envy and desire for material things, is birthed from the bombardment of advertisements designed to make us feel like we are less than, unless we buy more.
The tendency to feel more lonely than other parts of the year is the effect of pressure that we may feel from family, friends or what we see on social media to show up in ways that feel performative and obligatory instead of life-giving.
The pressure to hurry - to meet goals, to buy all the gifts, to lose the weight, to check off those resolutions that we made at the beginning of the year, so they don’t end up on the list for another year running, can strip us from the joy and celebration that the Hallmark movies we’re trying to emulate, promise us.
As followers of Christ, we should have different expectations. We should have more than a greeting card hope, because the joy in our celebration comes from an eternal promise fulfilled.
As we saw on week one, the promise of Jesus coming was God’s plan from the beginning. This week, we see the next chapter of this promise unfold, as God promised Abraham to make him the father of many nations. Abraham’s belief in God’s ability to keep that promise was credited to him as righteousness.
His belief in God was so unshakable, that he was willing to give up his promised son on the strength that God had the ability to, and would raise Isaac from the dead in order to keep His word. Like Abraham, we need to trust in the unchanging nature of God’s character this Advent season.
The miraculous birth of Christ is the confirmation of the covenants made with God’s people in Genesis and all throughout the Bible. His coming confirms that God’s promises are true then, now and forevermore.
In response, we should lean in to His presence and hold on to these truths, believing that they are the answer to every cultural pressure barreling down on us.
We should trust Him in a way that we can walk down any street and by any shop window and be unmoved by covetousness. We can be free of our feelings of loneliness and sadness because we rest in the truth that God has saved us into a family, and we can take a deep breath, and relax amidst the frenzy of activity.
We serve a God who is a promise keeper. That truth should free us to walk in the freedom that He calls us to in this season and every season.