Instead of looking inward to as we re-orient in the New Year, Paul in Ephesians 1 encourages us to look to God’s promises and all that God has done for us in Christ.

The birth of Christ re-imagined and told from the perspective of “Benjamin” the Inn Keeper in Bethlehem.

Christmas causes us to want to be home for the holidays. But no Christmas tradition and no home can satisfy the depths of our eternal longing for Home, because we are alienated from God. But the Good Tidings of the Angels to the shepherds is that on Christmas God left his home to enter ours and offer us forgiveness, salvation and welcome to his family and to the eternal home we truly desire.

Prepare the way of the Lord, Isaiah declares. But how? To prepare you need to know what you are expecting. Our expectations–what we are looking for in life and from God–affect our ability to receive what God is offering.

“As you go,” the Lord instructs through Isaiah. God plans to bring his kingdom like waters and blossoms in the dessert and he invites his people to anticipate and participate in faith, not just to wait around.

The Christmas season rarely lives up to our expectations. This is because, as Isaiah reveals, what we are really longing for is heaven and shalom. And what we truly need is the knowledge of God, the justice of the judge and the hope of the Messiah. Advent is a season to live into that points us to these deeper needs and wants and can shape our year round lives.

Isaiah calls Israel to trust Yahweh and not the power of the nations, to live in true wisdom not in human and to walk in the Light in the midst of a dark world. Isaiah is the backdrop and message of Advent and the longing of God to come and right all wrongs.