Longing for Emmanuel – Habakkuk 1:2-4
December 8, 2019Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Speaker: Jerry Cisar
Advent, that season leading up to Christmas, has not always been about the mad rush to get “ready” for Christmas—buying, wrapping, and mailing the gifts, and then planning the festivities. Advent is about waiting. Not waiting in line at stores; a different waiting. Andre Henry describes Advent as “the time for acknowledging our deep longing for the world to be made right and the joy of Christmas emerges from that season of groaning—from the fact that God has met us exactly where we are, as we are.”
If we don’t pause and reflect on the waiting, on the groaning, Christmas becomes like an answer without a question. Hence, for many, Christmas has become meaningless and the only thing left is the nostalgia. Our text, Habakkuk 1:2-4, may seem like an odd Advent text, but it poses the questions to which Christmas was the answer, but not in a trite or cliché way.
For many, Christmas is not “the most wonderful time of the year.” Why? In short because brokenness still exists. God’s answer in the form of Jesus was not a fix to our problems so that we might live our lives in “suffering free zones.” God’s answer, Jesus, didn’t set everything right in the world but demonstrated how God will set everything right, and created a people through whom that process would continue until the day when He brings it to His glorious completion!
Join us as we prepare our hearts to celebrate our King’s birth.