This past Sunday marks the beginning of the Advent season. After a tumultuous year leading up to the holiday season, many people have seized the opportunity to begin to decorate and celebrate the wonderful message of hope found during Christmas time. The first Sunday of Advent gives us the opportunity to center our thoughts on hope. God offers hope to our lost and dying world through the gift of his Son Jesus Christ.

Paul in his message to the Galatians shares perfectly the great hope we celebrate at Christmas!

 ^“But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God” (Galatians 4:4-8).

Without God’s intervention, we are all slaves bound up in our sinful nature and helplessly headed to judgment. Because of God’s love, we are now his children, able to cry out to him as our Heavenly Father looking forward to his kingdom.

As we prepare our hearts to celebrate the coming of Jesus Christ to Bethlehem as the greatest gift the world has ever received, let us stir up our hearts and homes in hopeful anticipation of his imminent return. This hope should bring a new vital message to our world of the importance of the Christmas story for the future of those who are part of the family of God. As we light the candle of hope in the Advent wreath, may our hope be found in God’s great plan of salvation that he lays out in Scripture from the beginning of the world. Let it remind us of the prophesies fulfilled by the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem and glimpse of hope found in the promises of God found in the prophesies of his return.