Scripture Reflections for the First Sunday of Advent
Year C, Lectionary 3
How vigilant are we to accept the coming of Jesus? If our focus is on Christ we will dedicate our lives in faith and hope in receiving God in all aspects of our lives. We will need to remove all distractions of our lives that moves our attention and focus towards worldly concerns. For although we do not know the hour of Jesus' coming, we are certain that he will return.
Hate feeling lost on Sundays at church? Searching for a better explanation of the Bible than what you hear from your pastor's sermon? Check out the following collection of audio, video, and text commentaries from various Christian experts for a better understanding of today's scripture that deal with: Advent • Anticipate • Await • Baptism • Belong • Care • Charity • Comfort • Coming • Community • Cross • End • Eternity • Faith • Fear • Focus • Follow • Gift • History • Holy • Holy Spirit • Hope • Incarnate • Judgment • Justice • Listen • Neighbor • Peace • Poverty • Prayer • Prepare • Priority • Promise • Racism • Relationship • Remember • Resurrection • Revelation • Salvation • Search • Seed • Seperate • Sign • Spirit • Struggle • Suffering • Thankful • Trust • Violence • Wait • Welcome • Worry •
“Paul is telling the Thessalonians 'you need to get ready for Advent'...the final Advent, for the Second Advent. And the way you get ready for the Second Advent is to grow in charity and to walk in holiness.”
“But more than those life-changing moments I feel like creation is so filled with God's spirit that when we are able to see the extraordinary in the ordinary we realize that Christ is continuously coming in our lives”
“Our destination as a Church is to be in the place where Jesus can come and meet us”
“Let us not be so obsessed with looking back to the past or forwards to the future that we ignore the present moment. So keep watch and stay awake for the Lord’s coming today.”
“As these times wear on us it is tempting and often easier to turn inwards and to ignore the cries of the needy for our own comfort. But this is not God's redeeming way. In contrast to our culture of indifference God calls us to tend to the wounds of the world.”
“Jesus aims to inspire true strength and infuse hope. He is not threatening tragedies but announcing that we will see him again. He invites us to open our hearts to hope and to be ready to stand erect before him.”
“My Spirit was crushed for many weeks and I realized that we must keep our spirits centered in the things of God and not the things of man”
“be a people about righteousness, be a people of hope, be a people of anticipation, not anticipating what it is that's coming our way but anticipate how God can and will use us to continue to build up the Kingdom here on earth”
“We are uncomfortable with uncertainty but one thing that we can be certain of is that God is awesome”
“Baptism makes us a child of God but it doesn't make us an adult, it doesn't bring us into spiritual adulthood. In order to be an adult we have to learn, we have to grow but we also have to exercise, we have to exercise our spiritual faculties”
“we'll begin our journey...heading towards Christmas where we are going to meet the infant baby Jesus Christ...the way to make him laugh, the way to make him smile is to show love to our neighbors and the way to make him cry is to deny our neighbors love”
“Because long before you give a gift, receive a gift, put a gift in one person's hand, God already gave you a gift”
“The best gift that you can truly be getting ready is to truly prepare your souls for the coming of our Savior”
“Even in our tiredness we can meet the world as it is with a posture of openness, a posture of openness that will help wake us up so that we can participate in the hope, peace, joy and love of this holy season of preparation”
“We are called to recognize Jesus, the Emmanuel, God with us, God never without us, in every person we meet, especially those who we would normally exclude and in the small details and gestures we often fail to notice”
“You are not called primarily to defend your faith but to live it”
“we can become obsessed with the 'earthly Christmas' and forget the whole purpose of Christmas, the whole reason why this season exists at all”
