This is the second week of Advent, a season of waiting and wanting.  This special time lasts only four weeks, ending the week of Christmas Eve and Christmas.

Advent simply means “the coming.”

This morning we will be thinking about the next marker of that new world by focusing on the idea of peace. Peace might simply mean the absence of war, but our faith calls for more than that.

Peace in the Christian tradition implies not just a ceasing of hostilities, but also a building of relationship and connection that surpasses all understanding.

It’s a big challenge and one that can only be met through the work and life of Jesus the Christ, who we call the King of Kings.

A central message of the Advent season is this expected new relationship, which helps to heal all the people of the world and, indeed, all of creation.

Do you find this a powerful challenge?

I know I do, especially, in our current environment, which seems to delight in finding reasons for difference and separation instead of reconciliation and relationship.

While you are waiting, I would invite you to consider what sort of leader would be needed to bring such a change into this world? What sort of power would they have? What tools would they use?

This week: pray for the leaders in your life.

This is the first week of Advent, a season of waiting and wanting, which begins our church year. Advent lasts only four weeks, ending the week of Christmas and Christmas Eve.

Before that, we will hear beginning this morning, a story both very familiar and very odd. This story begins during a time long ago, so long ago some would say the Earth was not yet formed and a first light had yet to dawn.

Others would place the beginning of this story to a time when a group of slaves rebelled and took to wandering the deserts seeking the Promised Land.

Still others might trace the beginnings of this story to the hope that those people heard in the ways of an active God, a God that took special care of God’s people.

For us, perhaps, the story that we begin again this year, started in our own life with some of the magic of the Christmas season. Perhaps, it began long ago, when you learned some of the words to hymns and carols you now know by hear.

Perhaps, it began, when you learned that Christmas was a special time, because something special happens.

Or just perhaps, you are still waiting for that Christmas to really come into your life. Still waiting for the promises that you hoped God would bring: the blessings, the new life, the rebirth of old life.

Pick a starting point this morning. Pick a place to stand
And, then, be prepared to begin the walk home again.