Today is Advent Sunday – the beginning of the run up to Christmas.
Earlier this month, I hosted a series of meetings entitled ‘10,000 Reasons for Hope in a War Zone’.
Igor Bandura, the Vice-President of the Baptist Union in Ukraine, spoke of how the hope found only in the gospel of Jesus Christ continues to be a very real one in his conflict-ridden land, and mention was made of the 10,000 baptisms of new believers that have taken place there since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in March 2022.
All this gave me the idea to write an Advent devotional using the Christmas story to focus on that same hope.
Now you will undoubtedly be relieved to hear that I haven’t attempted to find 10,000 reasons for hope in the Nativity – for were I to have done so, we would all have been here till April 29th 2053 and some of us at least would have given up the will to live, literally as well as literarily!
So instead, there will be just twenty-four short pieces this Advent, each of which I hope will offer a daily reason for hope, to any who may be interested, all the way up to Christmas Day itself.
And whether those who read them are many, or no more than just the one or two, the reasons I find will remain here for any who, like me, are in need of a little hope in their lives.
So as we head towards Christmas, my prayer is that the God of hope would fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope [Romans 15:13] – that together we might all enjoy a very Merry Christmas, whatever our personal circumstances might be.
We’ll begin tomorrow with Day 1: Hope in the Silence.
Some musings 