Today is the first Sunday of Advent, 2025. It is hard to believe in the light when so much of our world seems to thrive on hatred, violence, anger, vitriol, greed, and lies, but through it all, Emmanuel, “God is with us!” Through His light, peace, love, hope, and grace, we can believe, because He walks beside us through the good and the bad times.
As I look out over the newly fallen, fresh snow, pure, white, and without blemish, like our Savior, I am reminded that we are all Children of God. Many do not believe, but many still do. His light, peace, love, hope, and grace are all around me; those things keep my faith strong, even when the world’s darkness crowds in on me. As we prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ and God’s beautiful gifts, I offer some thoughts for this first day of Advent.
In order to walk in the light, we must be willing to be breakable, for it is in the re-building that we grow. Peace is achieved and shared with others when we never stop laughing, never stop loving, and never stop living. When we find God’s gifts of talents, we find the meaning of our lives, and the purposes of those talents are to share them with others. The act of sharing creates the love we all need to survive in a troubled world. It is our love and honesty that build bridges of integrity and caring to others.
Without hope, God’s miracles are not possible, but with faith, God opens the doors through which those miracles can come into our hearts. Our dreams are possible when they come equipped with wings. We all trip up from time to time, but with hope, we can pick ourselves up and begin a brighter move forward. All those dreams we thought were impossible are made possible on the wings of perseverance, love, grace, strength, and courage. Those wings belong to God; with Him, all things are possible. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, we cannot time-travel back to when we made mistakes, but we can change the outcomes by changing where we are now. With His grace and forgiveness, all sins are forgiven by Him who gave us life.
Moving forward, what we should want is determined by what God wants. Right now, He wants to be with us all, and that is enough to cure the darkness of the world. He makes us new with the colors of the rainbow, but the purest color is white, Jesus Christ.
Anna Hartt
