“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” –Mark 1:1
In the season of Advent we remember beginnings. We remember the beginning of Jesus’ life: the announcement of Mary’s pregnancy, the long journey Mary and Joseph took from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and the events that led to Jesus’ birth in a lowly stable in Bethlehem. As we journey with Mary and Joseph during our study of Adam Hamilton’s The Journey, I am reminded that God took a difficult and trying situation and turned it into a story of power and redemption.
After all, Jesus’ birth is the beginning of the good news that God is working to save the world from itself. This good news, as the Gospel of Mark points out, is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The good news we celebrate is that God became human. God loved each of us so much that God did the extraordinary in order to save us. This is the mystery of the incarnation, of God becoming flesh: God, the one who made creation, became a part of creation by becoming a human man. God somehow squeezed all of divinity into a single person, Jesus the Messiah. God became a human to save us from the patterns that destroy us – hatred, violence, greed – and teach us to live a new way, the way of the Kingdom of God.
In the season of Advent we are called to look for new beginnings. God wants to save the world from itself. God wants to save us from ourselves. God wants to free us from everything that prevents us from experiencing love and peace and joy. God wants to teach us a better way to live and God wants to lead us into the way of God’s Kingdom. As we ponder the beginnings of Jesus’ life during Advent, I encourage you to ponder how this Christmas might be a new beginning for your life. I encourage you to invite God to do something new in your heart, in your mind, in your life. Jesus came so that we might have life, and have it abundantly. I pray that this season of Advent may be the beginning of something new in your life as you encounter anew abundant love and abundant joy.
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