Belmont University Advent GuideSample

Once again the joyous season of Advent has arrived! The psalmist invites us to “Make a joyful noise to the Lord and to break forth into joyous song and sing praises!” (Psalms 98.4)

Advent begins with the fourth Sunday before Christmas and culminates in Christmas morning, when we arise to meet a special new dawn. Advent is a time of deliberate preparation to receive a deep and abiding blessing; it is a time of longing for something that cannot quite be put into words, a time of spiritually sensing that something is in the air, something is about to happen that is going to be beyond ordinary experiences.

Advent is a time to be full of hope, joy, and good will as we once again ponder God’s gift of love, manifested in a small baby, born in a lowly estate so very long ago and so very far away. Who would have ever expected God would come in this way—taking the form of a little baby, born to the most humble of parents, born in an out-of-the-way place in an impoverished land? Who would have expected this little child would grow up to change the world forever? What a gift of the ages! Yet that gift is ever new and fresh—very present, very near and yet timeless.

Throughout His life, Jesus proclaimed God’s grand purpose for us—to be loved of God and to love others as He loves us—so simple and yet so profound! All can easily grasp it, from the most unsophisticated to the most learned. Whatever other purposes we set in life, the ultimate purpose is to realize God’s transforming love and to translate that love into acts of human kindness towards others.

What a wonder it is, too, that we are connected through God with all creatures who have gone before, who are living now and who will come after we pass from this earthly scene into the Larger Life of God’s eternal kingdom. This joy is forever dawning on all of God’s people in the eternal now, as it dawned on the humble shepherds of old. We are one with them.

May we, through all the moments of our lives, take joy in discovering God’s gift of love, spiritual in nature, and brought to full fruition in Jesus of Nazareth.

Ernest Heard
Lecturer in Religion