Hopeless in Jerusalem

We are continuing in our series called “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” and what we try to do every year during the month of December is just prepare our hearts for celebrating the birth of Jesus. Many of us go to great lengths to prepare our homes to celebrate His birth. We put up the Christmas trees and hang the lights and all the decorations. We start playing different kinds of music, and we change the environment around us. But we want to be even more intentional to prepare our hearts, just as we have prepared our homes to celebrate the birth of Christ.

This season in the calendar…a church calendar…is typically called “the season of Advent.” Many of you grew up recognizing the Advent season. Some of you, maybe not. But starting four Sundays before Christmas the Advent season begins – which is why we lit the first Advent candle last Sunday morning – and it ends on the night before Christmas. It ends on December 24th. It’s been recognized for centuries. It’s celebrated even now by millions and millions of Christians all around the world. And this month…these four weeks…are meant to be a season of preparation—preparing our hearts, preparing our homes. It’s meant to be a time of expectation building up to a celebration, as we remember that Jesus was born to save us from our sins.

And so some of you didn’t know why you started that. Like, right after Thanksgiving you’d get out the Christmas tree. But it’s actually deeply rooted in church history. That this time of the year—not just on Christmas day but throughout these four weeks—is meant to be a time of recognizing, a time of preparing and celebrating. So all those external adornments are meant to trigger this internal anticipation so that we are fully prepared to celebrate the significance of what happened.