Happy New Year! As strange as that greeting may seem, we are beginning a new year in the life of the Church. We are entering into the season of Advent. This is the season when we prepare for the coming of Christ.

Advent is the four weeks leading up to Christmas. It reminds us that we, as Christians, are living in a state of Already…Not Yet. Here is what I mean by that: Jesus has already been born, ministered, been crucified and resurrected, ascended to the Father, and sent the Holy Spirit. That is our “Already.” And yet, we await Jesus’s return to make all things right, to reign with justice and mercy, and to restore creation. That is our “Not Yet.” We are both Easter and Advent people: celebrating the Already while anticipating the Not Yet.

Because we are stuck in this place of Not Yet—this limbo, this holding pattern of faith, this seemingly endless waiting—it can be easy to forget what is coming. That is, in part, why we choose to focus this season on hope, peace, joy, and love. When we focus on these aspects, remembering the Already of our faith, it makes the Not Yet a little easier to live in.

We hold fast to hope, hope that Jesus is coming back and that he is going to make all things right despite what we see happening all around us. But that is the thing, Biblical “hope is not the anticipation of a positive outcome based on reason; rather, it is the anticipation of a positive outcome based on God’s trustworthiness” (Anna Sieges-Beal). Hope is about us trusting in God’s promises for the Not Yet.

We hold fast to peace. The Hebrew word for peace is Shalom and is best under-stood as wholeness. We have this peace, this Shalom, when we can look around us and imagine “what it would be like if the world around us were whole. If nations, communities, and homes were whole? That is peace in the Hebrew Bible” (Aaron Higashi). This is the peace God will bring to the Not Yet.

We hold fast to joy. In Scripture, “joy is…a profound spiritual state that transcends mere happiness, rooted in a deep relationship with God. Unlike fleeting emotions tied to external circumstances, Biblical joy arises from recognizing God’s presence and work in our lives” (Cynthia Shafer-Elliot). This kind of joy sustains us as we live in the in-between time.

Finally, we hold fast to love. Love is multi-faceted and can mean different things to each of us. But “anyone who’s interested in knowing the God imagined by biblical authors cannot do so without also imagining what love is, because, as 1 John 4:16-20 says, God is love, and we cannot love God without loving human beings” (Aaron Higashi). Even as the world around us seems to forget what it means to love one another, being filled with the love of God gives us the strength to love the people we encounter regardless of our differences.

So, as we enter this season of Already and Not Yet, I pray we will hold tightly to the hope, peace, joy, and love that God has promised us through Jesus, even as we wait for his return.

Grace & Peace y’all
Pastor Blake

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