Sunday, December 18, 2011

Genesis 3:8-15; John 3:16-21

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."

Advent is a time of hopeful anticipation. It is because we are believers that we joyfully anticipate the birth of Jesus, and the promise of eternal life to all who believe in him.

How this contrasts with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When God asks Adam, "Where are you?", his response was, "I heard the sound of you in the Garden and I was afraid."Adam and Eve were not joyfully anticipating God's presence, but were anticipating it with fear because they had forgotten about God and turned away from Him.

From these two readings, we learn a simple message. As humans, we are sinful by nature and there are consequences of our sins. We can, however, be reconciled with God, not because we can deny our nature or avoid sin altogether, but because we believe in God and strive to live in his way.

I think there is an even simpler lesson we may learn. With God, there is joy and hope. If we forget God and turn away from God, there is fear and hopelessness.

I recently returned from my second tour in El Salvador, this time accompanied by my youngest daughter, Corie. El Salvador is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Sadly, it is the most violent. Gangs rule many of its neighborhoods. There is political oppression and economic exploitation of its people. There is still a very living memory of its civil war and it's unimaginable horrors. It can remind one of the words Solzhenitsyn once used to describe Russia, "Men have forgotten God, and that is why all this has happened."

In fact, we saw places that appeared to have forgotten God, and there was fear and violence and despair in those places. But we also saw places where faith in God lived, and there was joy and hope and love in these communities, despite great adversity. In fact, we saw such tremendous faith that it inspired and brought hope to all of us.

I believe our role in places like El Salvador is to connect with these communities, because communities of faith can strengthen each other, and to do what we can to help them, as they have helped us by sharing their faith, because in doing so we become one community.

...And we can wait with hopeful anticipation together.

(Dick Welch)