Presbytery of Northeastern New Jersey Updates

lisa26365
Oct 13, 2023
2 min read

Updated: 16 minutes ago

The Presbytery of Northeast New Jersey

Advent begins not at a manger but at a mountain. Isaiah paints a bold picture of nations that have spent generations warring, suddenly walking side by side, streaming toward a shared future shaped by God. It is impossible to hope, the kind that refuses to be limited by what has already happened, the kind that imagines peace in places where history insists it cannot be. In a time when many churches feel weighed down by anxiety, Isaiah invites us to lift our eyes to a horizon only God could draw.

And then Matthew meets us on that horizon not with a timetable for fulfillment, but a call to wakefulness. Jesus tells his disciples that God’s future will arrive like unexpected guests in the night, not on a schedule we can manage or manipulate. If Isaiah gives us the vision of impossible hope, Matthew gives us the posture: stay awake to the ways God may be arriving before we even realize it.

That kind of wakefulness is challenging in the church today. When we’re exhausted, it’s easier to lower our expectations than to raise our eyes. Many congregations are tempted to believe the future is fixed, that the only story ahead is one of managing decline. But Advent disrupts that resignation. Hope is not wishful thinking, it is the spiritual skill of paying attention to where God is already stirring. It is the discipline of looking for glimmers of hope when all we see is gray.

This season, hope becomes an act of resistance. We resist the temptation to measure God’s activity by our own timelines. We resist the narrative that says the Church’s best days are behind it. Advent invites us instead to look for the small signs like new ministries emerging, partnerships forming, or unexpected relationships taking root because these are often the first hints of God’s future breaking open.

The good news of Advent Hope is this: