How Can We Ever Be Discouraged

 Today is the third Sunday of the Advent season.  Our church of course makes a big celebration out of it.  I have been extremely busy this year so I haven't really sat down to think about it much.  Fortunately, at The Federalist Elly Reynolds has an excellent meditation on the meaning of Advent at Bad News In The World Reminds Us We Still Await a Second Advent. 

As Christians, anticipating the Second Coming of Christ, we are to be in the world, but not of it. We are also to model Christ, which means feeding the hungry, comforting the downtrodden, advocating for those who can't speak, but mostly to hope for the Eternal.  Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, we are and always have been in a war of Good versus evil.  Christ came into the world, took the sin of the world on himself, then rose and ascended to be seated at the right hand of God.  And guess what?  He invites us to be sons and daughters of God with him.

That candid recognition of our world’s imperfection often leaves us discouraged. We are frustrated that so many naively buy the blatant lies of the corporate press and corrupt politicians, and that even basic truths like “don’t kill babies” and “boys and girls are different” meet vicious opposition.

Yet, unlike the utopian dreams of the globalist left, our goal is not and has never been the perfection of the system. Conservatives should not hope to “fix” the world — nor be despondent when it proves unfixable. While we should seek to cultivate and steward our culture and our communities, our inability to shut off the fire hose of foolishness, evil, and sin in our world today should remind us we await another one.

We Are Made to Long for the Eternal

The Advent season is a time to recall the ancient posture of a world awaiting its savior. We recall the longing of a people who had waited 400 years for the voice of God and millennia for his promised salvation.

But there is another Advent, or arrival, to which we look. We long for the day in which we will surrender our earthly failures and enjoy the presence of a heavenly God. Far from discouraging us, the shortcomings of Earth should embolden our hope. If men were angels, neither heaven nor salvation would be necessary.

What with work, with the giving of gifts, with all the terrible news that comes flooding into our houses, it is easy to become distracted. For this reason, one of my favorite advent hymns is Savior of the Nations Come or you can hear the music and see the lyrics here. Thirty-three years after the events of that first Christmas day, with His death on the cross, and subsequent resurrection, He secured a victory for God in this war. The devil doesn't know it yet, but he has already lost. It is this victory that every Christian celebreates at this time of each year. How can we ever be discouraged?