This year we as a community (and world) have collectively embodied advent. With a global pandemic disrupting so much of life, we all eagerly long for its end, for normality and community to be restored, for business and life to flourish again, for constant change to become stability. This longing is a glimpse of advent.

But Advent is more than longing. It’s also expectation. Israel waited hundreds of years, expecting the promised Savior to come. And he came. Likewise, we wait for Jesus, the promised savior, to return. And he will come. He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and death will be no more. Pain will be replaced by joy. Famine by feasting. Loneliness by belovedness. Grief by celebration. Forever!

Advent is a season of both longing and expectation. As a church community, this season is intended to point our deepest aches and yearnings to Jesus. He is the only remedy to our groans and the only fulfillment of our dreams. Sickness, violence, poverty, fear, death—he will replace them with unabating joy in His presence.

This Advent, may the Spirit of Jesus use all the brokenness seen and felt in 2020 to whet our appetite and root our hearts in the wonderful day of Christ's return—when this weary world will forever rejoice.