Quick link: Not in My Neighbourhood
In my Bible college days, we used to act out important events highlighted in Scripture. It sounds hokey, but it worked wonders for memorization. We’d march through the Red Sea and count the Twelve Spies, separate Judah from Israel, and watched the prophets speak. Then, at the end of the Old Testament, we’d put a finger to our lips and say, “400 years… silence.”
The voice of God, through His prophets, was no more.
Those 400 years are represented in our four weeks of Advent. During these weeks, we read clues of Jesus in the prophecies, meditate on His eternal plan for creation, and wait for signs and wonders. Or at least, that’s what I think we’re supposed to do.
//
A couple of unsettling acts of violence have rattled our leafy Dublin suburb. It's enough to make me wanna close my eyes and ignore everything in the world around me. And it's also enough to make me run quickly towards the nearest advent calendar for a peace of chocolate and some sanity.
But instead of chocolate, I'm chewing on the idea that Advent may just be the antidote for our over-consumption of violent headlines, if not our addiction to gloom and doom. If nothing it else, it redirects our spirits towards something our world desperately needs: a Saviour.
You can read more about this, um, digestion process at VOX.ie.