Advent X (A Defeated Foe)

There is a sense in which Advent prepares us for the Christmas, but to a greater degree it is designed to help us to prepare for the final Christ appearance.  To be focused solely on Christmas coming to the point that the still to come Christ becomes simply an invisible passenger in the back seat is to miss entirely the core meaning of the Advent season.  Who actually is driving the Advent season is not the baby in the manger of Bethlehem, but the King who is to come one day out yonder in the future to bring an order into history for which we can in the present only hope.    

We not only live in a time between the first and second coming of Jesus, but we live in a world where we hope for good and see so much evil.  As much as we would like to think it is possible, evil has not yet been overcome.  Neither is it likely to be overcome tomorrow.  It does not make its appearance in the creative acts recorded in Genesis, but it shows up not long after the creative work is completed.  We see its stain across the story of the Old Testament and its power being unleashed on that day when Jesus was hung on a cross.  The pages of history may record the progress of humanity, but alongside the progress are always the evidences of the lurking power of Satan.  

Advent does nothing to diminish the power of the evil one.  It does not deny its presence.  What it does do is announce that while it for some reason is allowed to work its woe, its power will one day be not just diminished, but destroyed when Christ comes in the clouds in His final victory.  This is our hope.  Between now and then, in the. midst of evil is where we live.  Our final hope is not in what we are able to do, but in what Christ is going to do when He comes again.