What do you loose when you have no faith? What do you loose when you are not vaccinated? What do you loose when you don’t love your family or your neighbors? What do you loose when you don’t defend our country’s freedoms? What do you loose when you don’t do good in the world? What do you loose when you criticize everything and everyone without offering concrete advice or solutions to problems? What do you loose when you don’t help the homeless, the less fortunate, those suffering from natural disasters, and the different? What do you loose when you allow racism, bigotry, child abuse, and violence to exist in your community or around the world? What do you loose when you neglect God’s creation and take for granted its gift to the continuation of the human race? What do you loose when you are not “Christ with flesh on?”
God meant for us to love one another as we love ourselves, to be the light of the world like His Son, and to be caretakers of His most beautiful creation, the earth. When we choose to be less than Christ-like, we are saying “Yes” to ourselves and “No” to others and Jesus Christ. This is the fourth Sunday in Advent, and we light the peace candle today. We are all longing for hope, joy, love, and peace as we go about our lives in a world turned upside down by so many problems. What we choose to do about our world says a lot about who we are. but what our choosing says about the importance of Jesus Christ in our lives is by far more important.
On Christmas Eve, we will light the Christ candle so that His light may shine throughout the world and into every human being’s heart. All the questions I have posed here are but a few that we must ask ourselves. I know that Christ’s light is at the very core of my being and that I have received an abundance of hope, joy, love, and peace throughout my life. The act of choosing things to be very committed to is a very small part of my life. What matters most is that I offer the same four things that Christ has given me to others. It is better to give than to receive, but today, I receive the most precious gift of peace from my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is my prayer that you will also know the peace that passes all understanding and that His light will shine in your heart.
Anna Hartt
